Starter Kit. Idea 141 of 500. Cluster 6
A Sri Lankan rice brand: red rice, suwandel and the heritage varieties, in retail packs abroad
The mechanism, from the book
Dilmah says it earns over 3 times the national average price for tea, because it does its own blending, branding and packing. The proof has been sitting inside the industry all along.
The first step
Pack small quantities of red rice, suwandel and two other heritage varieties, bought from farmers who grow them, in 1 kg bags naming the variety and district. Send a sample set to a Sri Lankan grocer abroad with cooking notes and a price list. Ask which two they would stock and how many bags a month. That order is the brand's first shelf.
- Who pays first
- A Sri Lankan grocer abroad whose customers want the heritage rice their parents ate, and cannot find it with its name on the bag.
- What leaves today
- Heritage rice is sold anonymously in local markets, so its names, which could command a speciality-grain price abroad, earn nothing.
Ask first
- Department of Agriculture. Ask which farmers grow heritage varieties and how purity is kept.
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask which markets abroad buy specialty rice and what help exists.
Check before you spend
That the variety is genuine and kept pure, that the rice passes testing for the buyer country, and that labels are honest.
Find out these three numbers
- What do shops abroad pay per kilo for heritage rice?
- How much heritage rice can farmers supply each season?
- What does milling and packing cost per pack?
A comparison from the book
Polonnaruwa hub. Appendix
"The hub is the heritage-rice brand, the floating cabanas on the tanks"
The book makes a heritage-rice brand the centre of the Polonnaruwa hub.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.