Unseasonal rains accompanied by hailstorm have put a big question mark on the government’s target of record production in the current Rabi season.
In most districts of Uttar Pradesh, unseasonal rains have damaged wheat, pea and chickpea (chana) crops but the government has claimed that crop damage has been restricted to only 14 districts.
As per preliminary estimates of the Agriculture department, the minimum damage could be 15 per cent and it could go up to 50 per cent and even higher in some districts.
For the current Rabi season, the production target was set at 640 lakh metric tons, which seems to be a far cry now.
Besides food grains, the rains have also damaged standing oilseeds, pulses and vegetable crops.
A senior official of the Agriculture department said, “A survey is on and the loss of to Rabi crop will be a minimum of 20 per cent as per preliminary estimates.”
As per the Revenue department, 14 districts suffered the maximum damage till March 13. The districts include Fatehpur, Azamgarh, Shahjahanpur, Budaun, Bahraich, Gonda, Barabanki, Sultanpur, Amethi, Jhansi, Etawah, Lakhimpur Kheri, Mirzapur and Sonbhadra.
The damage to Rabi crop in these 14 districts is as high as 33 per cent while no damage to crops has been reported from the rest 61 districts.
Meanwhile, the state government has set an ambitious wheat procurement target of 55 lakh MT for the coming 2020-21 Rabi marketing season.
The UP cabinet on Friday approved Rabi Procurement Policy under minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 1,925 per quintal set by the Union government.
Last year, the state had failed to achieve its target and could log only about 38 lakh MT of wheat as compared to the target of 55 lakh MT. The sluggish procurement in 2019-20 Rabi season was attributed to Lok Sabha elections apart from competitive prices in open market, which provided a viable option to farmers to sell their produce.
Following the poor response last year, the state government has extended wheat procurement window by an additional 10 days to June 25, 2019, to partly achieve its target and keep wheat prices firm in the market for the benefit of farmers.
Of the target of 55 lakh MT for wheat, Food Corporation of India would directly procure 1.5 lakh MT while the remaining would be purchased by various state government agencies, which would set up 5,000 procurement centres across UP.
The bulk of 25 lakh MT and 5 lakh MT would be procured by UP Cooperative Federation Limited and UP Cooperative Union respectively.
Procurement for Rabi crops would kick off from April 1 and continue for the next 75 days till June 15, 2020.
The process would not stop even if the seasonal target is achieved before the deadline.