Selling Tulshimala rice through a Facebook group for two and a half years; mills spend about Tk 3,500 a maund and sell at Tk 3,800

In June 2020, during the pandemic, a young man from the Nabinagar area of Sherpur town opened a Facebook-based group called 'Tulshimala Express'. According to a December 2022 Prothom Alo report, for two and a half years since then he has been taking orders online and delivering Tulshimala rice to buyers in different districts. In his words, when the district administration chose tourism and the Tulshimala paddy as Sherpur's branding and promoted them widely, they felt a duty to carry that effort forward and started work. The report also sets out the trade's numbers. At the start of the season farmers usually sell paddy at Tk 2,000 per maund; 68 kg of paddy gives one maund of rice, so a maund of rice costs about Tk 3,500 to produce. Mills sell a maund of Tulshimala rice at Tk 3,800, and late in the previous season the price had been Tk 4,400 to 4,500 for two to three months. About fifty automatic rice mills in the district make this rice, and mill owners also buy aromatic paddy from markets in Durgapur, Gouripur, Phulpur and Haluaghat in Mymensingh. Around Tk 100 crore of Tulshimala rice is traded in the district each year; new rice reaches the market from the first week of December. The agriculture extension department said it had taken steps on value addition and market linkages so that new entrepreneurs would emerge in rice marketing, and the district administration was then pursuing GI status for the rice.