• Harvest rice when the ear is ripe and the grains on the panicles are golden brown.
• Paddy rice is ready for harvesting 120-160 days after planting and the yield is 3 to 9 tons of paddy per hectare.
• Harvest 8 to 10 days after maturity date in wet season and 4 to 8 days after maturity date in dry season
• Water should be drained 7 to 10 days before harvesting

• Reaping; cutting the mature panicles above the ground,
• Threshing; separating the paddy grain from the rest of cut crop
• Cleaning; removing immature, unfilled, non-grain materials
• Hauling ; moving the cut crop to threshing location
• Field drying; leaving the cut crop in the field and exposing to sun for drying
• Piling; temporarily storing the harvest crop in stacks or piles
• Bagging; putting the threshed grain in bags for transport and storage

Harvesting too early results in many immature grains. This will give big amounts of bran and broken grains during milling.

Harvesting too late results in losing many grains because of shattering. If the grains are too dry they get cracked during threshing. These cracked grains will break during milling hence harvesting less yield.

• Rice to be used for food purposes should be stored in paddy rather than in milled rice as the husk provide protection against insects and helps to prevent quality deterioration
• Paddy rice is stored in bags or lofts.

Rice is processed in Malawi, Fadaz Rice Milling in Limbe and Rice Milling Company Limited in Blantyre are some of the companies which process rice.

Rice Milling process can be simple one or two step processor multi stage process

Village milling of rice

• Cleaning is done by winnowing to separate unfilled paddy grain. Hand pounding of the paddy in a motor using with a pestle which removes the husks and bran layers

• Rice market is dominated by middle men or vendors because there is no structured market for sale
• There is also inadequate storage and milling facilities hence many farmers sell un-milled rice and they fail to negotiate for better prices as there is no degree of value-addition to their rice
• There is no price control mechanism in place to enforce marketing activities
• Vendors are at liberty to set buying prices at their liking