Bharat International Rice Conference will give greater access to Indian rice farmers: IREF's Dev Garg

Mega rice conferences have been held in several countries, but India, a key grower and exporter, had never hosted an event of this scale, he said, speaking to ANI.

"This is for the first time that justice is being done, and the discourse is coming back to India. India is the largest producer of rice. India is the largest exporter of rice," he said, a day before the conference is set to kick off at Bharat Mandapam.

According to him, India exports rice to 172 countries worldwide, and controls about 40 per cent of the market share.

"In spite of this dominance in the (rice) sector, India was not granted its due justice," Dev Garg added.

"Today, I have been receiving the foreign delegates the whole day. More than 1,000 foreign delegates from 80 countries are here. It's a crowd, is not a small crowd, but it's a large crowd. There are so many farmers from across 20 states of India. Various farmers producing various GI and exotic varieties of rice are here. We are connecting the farmers to the global market. This is the first time that this opportunity has arisen where we have all stakeholders under one roof," he said.

The farmer, the miller, the exporter, and the foreign buyer all will get a chance to interact with each other, to conduct business and to translate words into action, he supplemented.

Dev Garg noted that the mega rice conference will "offer a unique opportunity, where our farmers can shift from selling their crops under the minimum support price and we will be able to get higher prices than the MSP prices for our farmers."

Garg illustrated this with an example: "In the case of Japanese cuisine, the rice that the Japanese cuisine uses is much, much more expensive than what our farmers get under the MSP regime. However, there is an apprehension in the foreign buyer's mind whether Indian rice will be a suitable replacement for Japanese cuisine."

To bridge this perception gap, BIRC 2025 will feature a Culinary Experience Centre curated with support from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). "We will create a Culinary Experience Zone wherein we will show that Indian rice is a suitable replacement for foreign cuisines," Garg asserted.

More than 4 billion people depend on rice for sustenance and income, including approximately 150 million smallholder farmers who cultivate the crop across 100+ countries. Rice anchors a global industry valued at roughly USD 330 billion and is the third-most-traded food commodity.

India produced around 150 million tonnes of rice in 2024-25 from nearly 47 million hectares--about 28% of global output--with average yields improving from 2.72 tonnes per hectare in 2014-15 to about 3.2 tonnes per hectare in 2024-25, owing to better seed varieties, agronomic practices, irrigation coverage, technology adoption, and supportive policies.

The event will target Rs 1.80 lakh crore in new rice import markets currently sourced from India's competitors, with Rs 25,000 crore worth of export MoUs/contracts identified, organisers have said earlier. (ANI)