Giving a major relief to the affected farmers, the Centre has further relaxed the limit of lustre loss grains upto 90 per cent in five districts of Haryana namely Jind, Mewat, Sonipat, Palwal and Faridabad based on the analysis results of wheat samples collected. After the state farmers witnessed huge crop damage due to the heavy rains recently, the BJP led Haryana Government had demanded relaxations in the norms for procurement of wheat.
A spokesman of Haryana Government on Thursday said, “The wheat grain upto 90 per cent luster loss would be purchased in five districts of the State.” After delay, the wheat arrival in mandis (grain markets) is finally picking up in the state and more than 30.89 lakh metric tonnes (MT) of wheat has arrived in mandis, of which 30,89,311 metric tonnes has been procured by Government procuring agencies.
Giving details of wheat procurement, he said that more than 13.15 lakh MT wheat is purchased by HAFED, Food and Supplies Department purchased 9.22 lakh MT wheat, Haryana Agro Industries Corporation over 3.30 lakh MT, Haryana Warehousing Corporation over 5.14 lakh MT and Confed 6,780 metric tonnes wheat.
Karnal district is leading in wheat arrival where more than 3.91 lakh MT wheat has arrived in the mandis followed by Kaithal with over 3.65 lakh MT wheat, Jind with arrival of over 2.83 lakh MT, Kurukshetra over 2.38 lakh MT, Sirsa over 3.59 lakh MT wheat. The spokesperson said that the payment of Rs1,563.99 crore had been released to farmers’ at the minimum support price of Rs1450 per quintal upto April 21.
The State Food and Supplies Department had released payment of Rs479.96 crore upto April 21. Similarly, payment of Rs734.86 crore had been released to farmers by HAFED, Rs105.32 crore by Haryana Agro and Rs143.85 crore by Haryana Warehousing Corporation. Meanwhile, Haryana Agriculture Minister OP Dhankar on Thursday met farmers and dealers at Anaj Mandi, Pipli in district Kurukshetra.
He took stock of procurement process at the mandi and also talked to the farmers present there. The State 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.
The recent crop damage assessment report of State Government has stated that Rohtak, Gurgaon and Kaithal districts witnessed maximum wheat crop damage with a total of 2.62 lakh acres wheat acreage getting affected by freak weather conditions. More than 26 per cent crop damage has been reported on a total of 27,5728.7 acres of land in nine districts of the State. So far, the assessment report on crop damage till April 18 has been received by the State Government from districts namely Faridabad, Yamunanagar, Panipat, Gurgaon, Kurukshetra, Rohtak, Karnal, Kaithal and Ambala.