Farmers forced to go for early harvesting, blame it on rains

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, April 17

Though wheat harvesting was expected to pick up pace next week, the inclement weather has created fear among farmers. As a result, they have started harvesting their crop. The area witnessed mild showers in the last two days.

Even on Saturday evening, the area received mild showers for around 10 minutes. Farmers said if it did not rain again during the night, they would be able to harvest crop the next day.

Meanwhile, grain markets in the district have started seeing arrival of the agriculture produce. Mandi board officials said a total of 6,716 MT of wheat has arrived at different grain markets in district on Saturday. Officials said panic harvesting can lead to more moisture content in grains and farmers would be forced to wait for procurement.

After the start of procurement on April 15, a total of 13,163 MT of wheat arrived in grain markets of the districts. The mandi board officials said around 6,686 MT crop has been procured by different government procurement agencies. Officials said 4,189 MT wheat was procured today.

They said maximum produce (1,640 MT) was procured by Markfed, followed by 1,199 by Pungrain. The PunSup has procured 925 MT, Punjab Warehouse around 450 MT and the FCI has purchased merely 3 MT produce, so far.