Airline magnate’s Arju brand long-grain rice to hit store shelves next month

‘We don’t buy paddy from the Indian market. We encourage farmers to produce it,’ says Birendra Bahadur Basnet, managing director of Buddha Air, about his rice mill venture.

Gopal Bahadur Dahal has always been running into problems while selling his paddy. For decades, the farmer from Belbari in Nepal’s eastern region has been using a middleman to market his crops who takes a big cut.