More than 53.24 lakh metric tonnes of wheat has so far arrived in mandis (grain markets) of Haryana. The State Food and Supplies Minister, Ram Bilas Sharma on Wednesday said that 53.22 lakh metric tonnes (MT) of wheat has been procured by government procuring agencies. Over 22.68 lakh MT wheat had been purchased by HAFED, whereas Food and Supplies Department had purchased 16.25 lakh metric tonnes.

Similarly, Haryana Agro Industries Corporation purchased over 5.64 lakh metric tonnes, Haryana Warehousing Corporation over 8.59 lakh metric tonnes, Confed 5,800 metric tonnes and dealers has purchased over 1867 metric tonnes of wheat. So far, district Sirsa was leading in wheat arrival where over 6.99 lakh metric tonnes of wheat had arrived in the mandis, followed by district Karnal, where over 5.90 lakh MT wheat had arrived in the mandis.

Kaithal had recorded an arrival of over 5.43 lakh MT wheat, Fatehabad over 5.36 lakh MT, Jind over 5.26 lakh MT, Kurukshetra more than 4.04 lakh metric tonnes and district Sonipat over 3.23 lakh metric tonnes of wheat. The State Government is likely to achieve its wheat procurement target of 65 lakh MT by the end of this week. Haryana had received excess rainfall in March and April which resulted in  huge losses to farmers. The State Government had also scaled down its wheat procurement target for central pool by 13 per cent to 65 lakh tonnes from 75 lakh MT for the Rabi marketing season.

According to the crop damage assessment reports, the damage was caused on 13.25 lakh acres of land in 21 districts of the State. Out of which 26 to 50 per cent damage was caused on 8.24 lakh acres of land, 51 to 75 per cent damage was caused on 1.92 lakh acres of land and 76 to 100 per cent damage was caused on 3.17 lakh acres of land. The maximum damage was caused in district Palwal where crops were damaged on a total area of 2, 58, 584 acres.