Wheat procurement surpasses last year’s figures; Punjab leads

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 25

Procurement of wheat by government agencies this year surpassed last year’s figures of 341.31 Lakh Metric Tonnes (LMT) to touch 341.56 LMT as on May 24, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution said on Monday.

Overcoming impediments created due to the spread of coronavirus, country-wide lockdown and other issues, the ministry said the figure surpassed last year’s procurement by 25,000 tonnes.

FCI Stocks

• As on May 25, the FCI has in its stocks 734.71 LMT food grains, including 271.12 LMT rice and 463.59 LMT wheat
• According to the government, this is apart from the procurement in the current season
• For various welfare schemes run by the government like the NFSA, the requirement per month is of 60 LMT

Punjab is leading with 125.84 LMT followed by Madhya Pradesh and Haryana.

Wheat harvesting generally starts towards the end of March and procurement commences in the first week of April every year. However, with the imposition of national lockdown on March 23, all operations came to a standstill.

The crop had ripened by then and was ready for harvesting. Considering this, the Centre gave relaxation to start agricultural and related activities during the lockdown period and the procurement could start from April 15 in most of the procuring states, officials said. In Haryana it started little late on April 20.

Officials said their biggest challenge was to ensure that procurement was done in a safe manner during the pandemic, which was achieved through a multi-pronged strategy of awareness creation, social distancing and deployment of technology.

A number of purchase centres were increased substantially reducing farmer footfalls in individual purchase centers. New centers were set up using every facility available at gram panchayat level and the numbers were increased sharply in major procuring states like Punjab where it went up from 1,836 to 3,681 and from 599 to 1,800 in Haryana and from 3,545 to 4,494 in Madhya Pradesh. Using technology, farmers were provided specific dates and slots to bring their produce which helped in avoiding overcrowding.

Strict social distancing norms were followed and sanitisation activities were undertaken regularly. In Punjab, every farmer was allotted specific spaces earmarked for dumping of stocks and nobody else was allowed to enter those areas. Only people, who were directly associated, were allowed to be present during daily auctions.