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| UP sets wheat procurement at 3 mn tonne | |
| Virendra Singh Rawat / New Delhi/ Lucknow April 29, 2009, 0:35 IST | |
Production estimated at over 27 mn tonne in the state.
With the wheat production in Uttar Pradesh estimated at over 27 million tonnes, state agencies have set a target of procuring 2 million tonne.
Besides, the Food Corporation of India (FCI) has set a target of another one million tonne by June 30, which puts the combined procurement target in UP at 3 million tonne.
UP is India’s largest wheat producing state and accounts for 35 per cent of the country’s food basket.
So far, 650,000 tonne wheat had been procured directly from farmers, UP food and civil supplies chief marketing officer Mehboob Hasan Khan told Business Standard.
This year, the central government had hiked the minimum support price (MSP) of wheat by Rs 80, as compared with last year, to Rs 1,080 per quintal to remunerate farmers.
“We have set up 4,380 procurement centres all over the state,” Khan said. These centres mainly belong to the state food marketing department and include the Provincial Cooperative Federation, UP Agro, UP Sahkari Sangh, UP State Food Corporation and the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Limited.
The production is estimated at 27.6 million tonnes this year as against about 25.5 million tonne last year. The wheat crop is still being harvested and the consolidated figures would soon be collated from across the districts.
Meanwhile, UP chief secretary Atul Kumar Gupta said the procurement target would be achieved by May 15 itself, since the procurement capacity at each centre had been enhanced to 600 quintals.
Last year, the government had deployed commission agents to boost wheat procurement since during 2007-08, the procurement figures were dismally low at 545,000 tonne.
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