Calcutta, Aug. 17: Widespread rain in south Bengal over the past 10 days has saved farmers engaged in the transplantation of paddy from the brink of a disaster.

Agriculture department officials, who assessed the situation at a meeting today, said the aman paddy yield would meet the state’s requirement of 129 lakh tonnes of rice.

“Over the past few years, we have been producing about 15 lakh tonnes more than our requirement of aman paddy. Our assessment showed, this year, we would be short by exactly 15 lakh tonnes as transplantation was affected by scant rain in July,” agriculture director Dhabaleswar Konar said after a seven-hour meeting with officials from the districts.

Agriculture minister Kamal Guha, who presided over the meeting, said there need not be any fear of hike in the price of rice as transplantation over 38 lakh hectares has been completed. “We were very tense following the lack of rain in July. But now we have completed nearly 85 per cent of the transplantation,” said Guha.