Every pack of Arema GI tagged Palakkadan Matta starts with a farmer, not a factory. Across the Bharathapuzha belt, generations of farmers still grow paddy the way GI tag demands.
Every pack of AREMA GI-tagged Palakkadan Matta starts with a farmer, not a factory. Across the Bharathapuzha belt — the river-fed agricultural corridor running through Palakkad district in Kerala — generations of farming families still grow paddy the way the GI tag demands: the right variety, in the right soil, with the right seasonal timing.
These are not large industrial operations. Most of our partner farmers work plots of 2 to 5 acres, often on land their grandparents cleared. They know every inch of it — which corners flood first in the monsoon, where the soil is richest, which paddy variety performs best in which microclimate. That knowledge, passed down over generations, is not something a seed catalogue or an agronomy report can replicate.
Farming in the Bharathapuzha belt is not easy work. The summer heat is extreme. Water levels fluctuate with the monsoon. Input costs — seeds, fertiliser, labour — have risen steadily, while the price offered by middlemen often has not. Many younger people have left farming for other opportunities, putting pressure on families to manage larger plots with fewer hands.
AREMA works directly with these farming communities, bypassing intermediaries where possible. This is not charity — it is strategy. Direct sourcing lets us pay a premium for quality grain, creates an incentive for farmers to maintain traditional cultivation practices, and gives us complete visibility into how our rice is grown. When we commit to a farmer for a season, we are committing to their craft.
We visit these farms. Our team travels to Palakkad during key growing periods — transplanting, harvest — to understand what's happening on the ground and to build relationships that go beyond invoice and payment. Some of our sourcing relationships are more than a decade old.
When you hold a pack of AREMA Matta rice, you are holding the result of someone's full agricultural year. We think that deserves to be said out loud.