1 week ago
Tamil Nadu Announces 100 Paddy Centres With AI Monitoring
Tamil Nadu wants to make it easier and safer for farmers to sell their paddy.
It plans to build 100 new places where paddy can be bought directly from farmers.
These places will have storage buildings and equipment to check moisture.
The government also plans to build and repair godowns for storing food grains.
QR codes will help officials follow rice bags from mills to ration shops.
Artificial intelligence will help check stocks and the quality of rice, wheat, dhal and sugar.
More ration shops and special face-authentication machines will help people who find fingerprint or eye checks difficult.
A chatbot and other monitoring systems will help consumers and officials get information and track supplies.
Tamil Nadu will build 100 direct paddy procurement centres with an allocation of Rs. 81 crore.
The new centres will raise the State’s total procurement-centre count to 889 and include storage, roads, water and moisture-testing facilities.
Fifteen godowns will be built to store 31,000 metric tonnes of food grains, while other godowns will be modernised or renovated.
QR tagging, vehicle tracking and artificial-intelligence systems will monitor rice quality, commodity stocks and deliveries to ration shops.
The government will add 150 ration shops, accessibility machines, consumer chatbot services and other facilities for workers and consumers.
- Who
- Tamil Nadu’s Food and Civil Supplies Minister P. Venkatraman announced the measures.
- What
- The State will build 100 paddy procurement centres and introduce new storage, monitoring, technology and ration-shop facilities.
- Where
- The measures will be implemented across Tamil Nadu, including godown facilities in Ariyalur, Namakkal and Mettupalayam.
- When
- The announcement was made on Thursday during a reply to the debate on the department’s demands for grants.
- Why
- The procurement centres are intended to speed up paddy purchasing and protect farmers’ produce from rain and moisture, while the technology will help monitor quality, stocks and deliveries.
Key facts
- New procurement centres
- 100 direct paddy procurement centres
- Procurement-centre total
- 889 centres after construction
- Procurement allocation
- Rs. 81 crore
- New food-grain godowns
- 15 godowns with storage capacity of 31,000 metric tonnes
- Additional ration shops
- 150 shops
- Free-rice beneficiaries
- 61 lakh beneficiaries receive 35 kilograms of rice
- Technology measures
- QR rice-bag tagging, vehicle location tracking and artificial-intelligence-based stock and quality monitoring
