UP wheat procurement at 1.2 mn tonnes is just 15% of mid-June target

Despite having 5,000 procurement centres, UP lacks warehouses to store large quantities of the crop

Even as wheat procurement in Uttar Pradesh by government agencies has touched 1.2 million tonnes (MT), the Yogi Adityanath government dispensation faces an uphill task to achieve procuring its targetted 8 MT by mid-June 2017.

The wheat procurement season had kicked off on April 1 and even as 35 of the total 75 procurement days have passed, the state agencies have managed to procure only 15 per cent of its target. The procurement would continue till June 15.

Meanwhile, the state farmers have also been paid nearly Rs 2,000 crore against the procurement of wheat. Earlier, the Yogi government had announced to pay Rs 10/quintal in addition to the minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 1,625/quintal of wheat as loading and unloading charges.

In this manner, the state farmers are projected to pocket total payments of over Rs 13,000 crore during the current rabi marketing season from government agencies alone. The rest of the wheat is sold in the open market or retained for private consumption by farmers.

Higher MSP helps farmers get remunerative prices in the open market as well and in fact, the purpose of the MSP is to ensure higher prices for agricultural produce, while assuring them of procurement by government agencies if the prices fall below the MSP.

This year UP has clocked wheat production of nearly 34 MT, indicating the government is targetted to procure less than 25 per cent of the total state wheat output this season.

The government has set up nearly 5,000 procurement centres across the state. However, UP lacks adequate warehousing facilities to store such large quantity of the rabi crop, since wheat procurement over the last few years had been quite dismal.

Last year, the Akhilesh Yadav government had managed to procure less than 8,00,000 tonnes of wheat, much below its targetted figure of 3 MT – an achievement of roughly 25%. Thus, the state last year could effectively procure less than 10% of the total wheat production and be leaving farmers at the mercy of market forces and middlemen.

Earlier, UP food and civil supplies department, chief marketing officer (CMO), A K Singh had claimed procurement process would gain momentum as the days advance. He said there was no scarcity of storage space for wheat and that additional storage capacity would be sourced from private parties, central government agencies and Food Corporation of India (FCI) if needed.

Of the 80 lakh procurement target, the FCI has the target of one MT.

The Yogi government had issued strict directives to the state food and civil supplies department to weed out middlemen from the procurement process and that lax official would be taken to task. After coming to power, the Yogi government had said agriculture remained its priority.