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CHALASTRA, Greece (Reuters) -Faced with droughts and sharper competition, Greek rice farmers are tapping into a new revenue stream: selling their cheap, broken rice to wedding goers instead of discarding it or using it for animal feed.
The tradition of tossing rice over newlyweds has become a wasteful problem in the Mediterranean country, say farmers, who estimate that nearly 200 metric tons of edible, full-grain rice are lost this way each year.
Under a new initiative, a cooperative in northern Greece's Chalastra, a major rice-growing region, has since May sold over three tons of broken rice rebranded and sold in white sacks labelled "wedding rice".
"When there is malnutrition... it is unfair to throw it away," said Christos Gatzaras, a 52-year-old farmer and head of the cooperative's rice producers.
Greece is the EU's third-largest rice producer, exporting most of its 250,000-ton annual production. But the sector is struggling with fierce competition from low-cost imports from South Asia and recent droughts in Greece's agricultural areas.
"We face many difficulties, the costs have spiked, we are under a lot of pressure," said farmer Vasilis Matziounis, 34, who backs the initiative.
Tens of thousands of religious and civil weddings are held in Greece each year, and many foreign couples choose the scenic islands of Santorini or Mykonos as a marital backdrop.
Broken rice - damaged during harvesting or processing - accounts for roughly 9% of Greece's rice exports and channelling it into weddings could help boost the sector.
"Some people will keep tossing edible rice," said Giannis Gogos, head of sales at Chalastra's primary cooperative. "But (this way) we can reduce the waste."
(Reporting by Alexandros Avramidis and Louisa Gouliamaki; Writing by Renee Maltezou; Editing by Edward McAllister and Ros Russell)