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 ri

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