Wheat Procurement On Target Despite Stir By Farmers
Fears of wheat procurement being adversely affected by the farmers stir for higher support prices are gradually giving way to cautious optimism. With wheat procurement having already crossed 5.5 million tonnes and a substantial part of the harvest yet to reach the market, Krishi Bhawan appears confident of mopping up enough grains to replenish the severely depleted foodgrain reserves.
The current rabi marketing season got off to a belated start due to delayed ripening of the crop. However, the arrival of fresh grains in the mandis of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh has now picked up. Although crop harvesting has almost ended in most parts of this region, threshing operations had been hampered in many areas due to recurring showers. But the bright sunshine in the past couple of days is likely to clear hindrances to threshing, paving the way for wheat arrivals to accelerate further in the next couple of days.
The Food Corporation of India (FCI) and other state procurement agencies seem confident of purchasing more than 10 million tonnes of wheat for the central grain pool in the current season, against last years 8 million tonnes. The call by various farmers organisation to boycott the mandis has had little impact on market arrivals or procurement, said sources.
Wheat output this year is expected to be at least 2.5 million tonnes higher than last years reduced harvest of 62.2 million tonnes. Sources expect this rise in output to be reflected in procurement.
According to the latest figures available with the FCI control room, the state agencies had purchased 5.5 million tonnes of wheat till Wednesday.
Of this, 3.7 million tonnes were purchased in Punjab. Haryana contributed 1.4 million tonnes and Uttar Pradesh about 200, 000 tonnes.
Nearly 360,000 tonnes of wheat were purchased by official agencies on Wednesday alone. The daily procurement is expected to rise to around 500,000 tonnes by the end of this week.
Although the main wheat marketing season usually ends by the last week of May, it is expected to spill over to June this year because of the delayed harvesting and threshing. Last year, the wheat procurement process had almost come to an end by this time, with procurement having touched 7.5 million tonnes by May 14, 1996. However, this year, the wheat procurement process is still some way away from touching its peak.