UP govt wary of 'distress selling' of wheat by farmers

State hopes to procure six million tonnes of wheat in April-June 2013

With the wheat procurement season underway in Uttar Pradesh, the state government has spelt out its priority of preventing distress sale of the rabi crop by farmers.

The state is targetting procurement of six million tonnes (MT) of wheat during April-June 2013 against the estimated production and acreage of 32.15 MT and 9.714 million hectares (MH).

The respective district magistrates (DM) have been directed to ensure effective auctioning at the mandis to prevent distress sale, wherein farmers sell their produce to middlemen at much lower than the minimum support price (MSP), which stands at Rs 1,350/quintal this year.

The distress sale occurs owing to various factors, including long queue at the procurement centres, non-existent/inoperative procurement centres, unavailability of silos, laxity of officials/staff, nexus of officials and middlemen.

State chief secretary Jawed Usmani has ordered for daily and weekly review of wheat procurement by the respective district procurement officer and DM respectively. Usmani would personally monitor the process and hold weekly review meetings via video-conferencing every Sunday.

Although, wheat procurement season kicked off on April 1, the actual arrival of wheat at the procurement centres is likely to begin only after a week.

Meanwhile, the various procurement agencies have been directed to prepare an action plan on war footing for arranging sufficient storage space for wheat. For alternative storage centres, a list of government/semi-government premises, polytechnics, industrial training institutes (ITI), inter/degree colleges, sugar/spinning mills etc would be prepared.

A joint team of UP State Warehousing Corporation (UPSWC), Food Corporation of India (FCI), food and revenue department would inspect and identify such places. Currently, UP Cooperative Federation Limited (PCF) has storage capacity of only 3.5 million tonnes.

Meanwhile, 6,000 procurement centres are being set up, of which 5,000 would be set up by the PCF and UP cooperative department alone.