Punjab may miss paddy procurement target: FCI officials

Punjab could fall short of its paddy procurement target of 185 lakh metric tonne (LMT) as the procurement season nears its end this month. Ninety-seven per cent of the paddy crop had already been harvested in the state.

Interestingly, while the FCI officials, basing their estimates on the initial claims by the state Agriculture Department regarding the fall in crop yield by 5-7 per cent, cite this as the main reason for the lower than targeted procurement, department officials blame the FCI for rejecting paddy not meeting specifications on moisture content.

“Of the total 2,174 crop cutting experiments to be conducted, the results of 1,849 have shown that the crop yield is 6,878 kg per hectare. Last year, it was 6,740 kg per hectare. This means the paddy production is high. If the procurement is less than target, maybe it is being rejected for procurement,” said an official of the Agriculture Department.

However, FCI sources fear the paddy procurement from the state will hover around 170 LMT. Till date, 162.78 LMT paddy has arrived in mandis across the state, of which 159.60 LMT has been procured by the state government agencies and the FCI.

The daily paddy arrivals have come down to 1.40-1.50 LMT. This is expected to go down to a few thousand LMT in the next two-three days, which has made the food procurement agencies believe that the target of procuring 185 LMT paddy cannot be met.

“Though the season will officially end on November 30, we expect the procurement operations to wind up by the end of this week. If the quantity of paddy procurement falls by 15 LMT below the target, even the amount of rice to be delivered from Punjab to the central pool will fall by 10-11 LMT,” said a senior FCI official.

However, this is not bothering the Centre or the state governments as the country’s granaries are brimming with rice. Inquiries made by The Tribune reveal that as on November 1, the country had 326 LMT rice in its stocks. In Punjab, 113 LMT rice is present in the granaries.

Meanwhile, FCI’s Punjab State Regional General Manager B Srinivasan said, “On average 15-20 rakes are being shifted from Punjab daily. When the procurement season began in October, we had only 5 LMT space for storing this year’s rice. In October, we moved out 13 LMT rice and another 7 LMT in November so far. We will be on target to create 90 LMT space by March 2025,” said .

With 4,872 rice millers now on board to process paddy and 4,840 have already been allotted produce, a team of the IIT-Kharagpur on Monday visited two rice mills each in Ludhiana, Sangrur and Moga. The team is here to assess the out turn ratio (OTR) of milling PR 126 variety of paddy.