Unseasonal rains in the last few weeks are expected to delay arrivals of grains in the mandis across key producing states of Punjab, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh even as government agencies commenced wheat procurement drive on Wednesday for the 2015-16 marketing season.
Food ministry officials told FE although the government has set a target of 30 million tonne of wheat purchase by Food Corporation of India (FCI) and state governments’ agencies for the marketing season (April-June), the actual purchase is expected to fall below that level because of crop loss due to rains.
However, FCI had a wheat stock of close to 20 million tonne at the start of March, 2015 while the buffer stocks norm for April 1 is only 7 million tonne.
“Even if the procurement falls by few million tonne, there is no cause of concern as we have ample wheat stocks,” an FCI official said.
Haryana, a key contributor to the central grain pool, has scaled down its wheat procurement target to 6.5 million tonne from earlier 7 MT. As per assessement done by agriculture ministry, crops in 1.7 million hectare in the state has been adversely impacted by the recent rains and hailstorms.
As per food ministry’s estimate, more than 12 million tonne of wheat is expected to be procured in Punjab, where rains have adversely impacted the condition of the crop in parts of the state.
Madhya Pradesh, which carries out its own wheat procurement on behalf of FCI, the food ministry has set a six million tonne target for the current year which is lower than last year.
“Although some parts of Madhya Pradesh has been impacted by recent rains, the crop condition at present is good and the farmers have already started harvesting,” a state government official said.
In Madhya Pradesh, 2.4 lakh hectare of wheat crops have been adversely impacted because of recent rains, while in Punjab the figure stands at 2.6 lakh hectare.
Madhya Pradesh, where procurement has already began two weeks back, the state government- owned agencies have purchased 1.3 lakh tonne of wheat till Wednesday while more than 3 lakh tonne was purchased during same period last year.
In 2014-15 marketing season, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh were top contributors to the central pool with 11.6 million tonne and 7 million tonne of wheat respectively.
Other contributors to the Centre’s wheat procurement drive were Haryana (6.4 MT), Rajasthan (2.5 MT) and Uttar Pradesh (5.9 lakh tonne) last year.
The private bulk buyers also purchased wheat more than 7 million tonne against around 3 million tonne reported in the 2013-14 rabi marketing season.
The government last year had increased MSP for wheat by a nominal R50 to R1,450 a quintal to encourage farmers to cover more area under the crop in the ongoing rabi season.