Growing up in India, I remember visiting one of our uncles rice mill, it was so much fun to see paddy go in and come out good shiny rice! And of course there is a lot of built up open space for drying the rice that we used to run around in.
In one of my recent trips I happen to visit a small rice mill and have noticed quite a bit a wastage of rice, energy and labor as the processes and equipment seem quote outdated. As I inquired, I found out that there is some latest tech but very expensive to buy for small to medium millers. India is the second largest producer of rice (about 100 M Tonnes) and some reports state that they operate with an estimated efficiency, paddy-to-rice ratio, close to 55%! I noticed this in India but I am sure the same problems exist across the globe. Hence this is #ProWoSo.
Several resources that are used in a mill are- water, air, electricity & labor. Some of the problems from my brief trip are as follows:
- Water is used to soak the grain and for the production of steam
- Electricity is used to run all kinds of machinery that include motors, pumps, blowers, conveyors etc
- Labor is involved heavily during various stages of cleaning, drying, feeding etc.
As you can see it is multi-stage complex process to produce a good quality rice from the paddy. Depending upon the type of equipment, method & skill of the technicians there could be wide range of wastage of grains, poor quality of rice! Which could be used to feed millions more and hence #ProWoSo.
Good luck to all the Pieneers! As always, know of anyone or any startup working on this, please let me know, I will update this post.
[Image Credit: Thanks to PublicDomainPictures via Pixabay]
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