Wheat production this year is expected to cross 75 million tonne, going by the condition of the crop and the sowing operations in the producing states, the Union food and agriculture minister, Sharad Pawar said on Friday.
Pawar told reporters after inaugurating the first regional Consultative Conference on APMC Model Rules, organised jointly by FICCI and the Union agriculture ministry: ?We have taken an overall review of sowing operations and condition of the wheat crop, and from the feedback received from the northern states, I am confident that in the next two months we should be able to harvest over 75 million tonne.?
No fresh import of wheat is being thought of, at least for now, he said.
In his inaugural address, Pawar said, ?We need to closely look at alternative models for marketing to assist farmers in better price discovery. We need to discuss ways to make the commodity exchanges work better for farmers by strengthening farmers? linkages with them. There is also a need to analyse how marketing infrastructure development programmes are performing, and how this development can be catalysed in the public-private partnership mode.?
The minister asked Ficci to prepare a report on the obstacles being faced by the farm sector, and the measures required to revamp the system of agricultural marketing. Setting a timeline for the report, Pawar said in two to three weeks the ministry could meet with Ficci officials and look for viable solutions to all problems.
?Let us then sit with the agriculture ministers of states and practically compel them to take time-bound decisions, so that within two months a final view can be taken to remove all obstacles and finalise a roadmap for taking agricultural growth and farmers? welfare to a higher growth trajectory,? he said.
Ficci has suggested the dire need to amend APMC Acts by states, by putting in place a unified license for operating in all markets in a state, direct procurement from farmers? fields, setting up of private market yard, contract farming, and e-auction trading, if the states are unable to repeal the Acts.
A Ficci paper circulated in the conference noted, that the private sector though encouraged to make forays into the farm sector and develop appropriate agri-marketing strategies, faces numerous challenges, viz stringent regulations in terms of APMC and EC Acts, lack of open and transparent price discovery mechanism and trading, restrictive marketing practices in some of the wholesale markets, and weak infrastructure.