Despite farm protests, UP wheat procurement jumps 40 per cent to 5 million tonnes

Lucknow / June 13, 2021

Despite ongoing farm protests against the new central laws, the Uttar Pradesh wheat procurement in the current rabi marketing season 2021-22 has jumped 40 per cent to breach the 5 million tonnes (MT) milestone.

Last year, the UP government could barely manage to procure 3.5 MT of wheat against the seasonal target of 5.5 MT in the backdrop of the first wave of pandemic.

According to the latest statistics, the government agencies, including the Food Corporation of India (FCI), had procured more than 5.25 MT of wheat valued at nearly Rs 10,400 crore from over 1.18 million state farmers.

UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath said nearly 88 per cent of the payments had already been made to the growers.

To remunerative farmers, the government had already hiked the MSP on wheat from Rs 1,925 in 2020-21 to Rs 1,975 in the current 2021-22 marketing season, while also increasing the number of procurement centres by nearly 20 per cent to 6,000 to facilitate seamless procurement in the backdrop of the second wave of Covid-19 and subsequent corona curfew.

Of the total procurement centres, the FCI has set up nearly 105 centres in UP. The government has issued stern directives for making prompt MSP payment to farmers directly in their bank accounts.

The procurement season, which started on April 1, will officially persist till June 15, 2021, although the Yogi Adityanath government had already announced that the centres would function till the farmers empty their fields for next crop.

Earlier, UP food and civil supplies (FCS) commissioner Manish Chauhan had said the state government had also roped in Lucknow-based Remote Sensing Application Centre for geo-tagging of the purchase centres and food grain godowns to ensure complete transparency and weed out middlemen.

Besides, the government had roped in about 150 farm marketing entities, including Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO) to aid the state wheat procurement process and simultaneously promote grassroots level rural entrepreneurs amid protests by a section of farmers.

(Virendra Singh Rawat is a Lucknow based journalist, who writes on contemporary issues of industry, economy, agriculture, infrastructure, budget etc)