Enhancement of Market Price of Rice by Value Addition and Entrepreneurship

India is one of the largest paddy producer in the world. However, hunger is one of the burning problem in India. From the literature survey it was found that plenty of paddy are spoiled due to lack of storage and processing. It is estimated that post-harvest processing of paddy using traditional methods leads upto a 9-12% as primary losses. In order to overcome the processing losses, it needs to mechanize the traditional processing methods like harvesting, threshing, cleaning, grading and milling etc. Mechanization like introducing a combine harvester or mechanical thresher and high quality rice mills may reduce the post-harvest losses. Additionally, the secondary losses of paddy which occurs after milling due to lack of storage, can reduce by adding the value to the rice by producing rice based new product. Value added product such as rice based ready to eat food, ready-made mixes (idli, dosa and rava) noodles and flours may enhance the market value of the rice thereby reduction in losses. Also, by-products of paddy such as rice barn processing may increase the extra income by small investment to the rice bran processing. Rice bran may stabilize and can produce the bran oil. Value addition of rice to different product enhances the original market price of the rice but it needs investment. A small or marginal farmer cannot invest the huge amount of equipment cost for processing. So, for the investment on paddy processing equipment/machineries an entrepreneur may introduces in paddy processing field. These investments may enhance the income of an entrepreneur or group of farmers. Agreement between an entrepreneur and farmer can fulfill the needs of farmer as well as entrepreneur. In this study various methods of value addition of rice are described as well.