Paddy procurement in the state is heading for a major roadblock for not only is the Food Corporation of India (FCI) going slow in some mandis,PUSA 44 and 47 - the two most grown paddy varieties in Punjab - are falling way below procurement specifications. Slamming FCI,Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister D S Guru,who was on a tour of the mandis of Jagraon,Mullanpur,Ludhiana,Khanna,Moga,Ajitwal and Badani,remarked,FCI needs to pull up its act at certain mandis. In mandis like Sangrur and Barnala,FCI has procured less than 3 per cent of the total arrivals. However,while the state government is complaining about FCIs slackness,the Corporations officials are complaining that poor quality paddy has been coming to the mandis. At Mullanpur mandi,an FCI official who did not want to be named and was inspecting a heap of paddy brought for procurement said,PUSA 44 and 47 have very high moisture content,somewhere near 22 to 24 per cent. Now even if the farmer tries to dry it up by using fans,the moisture content comes down by just 2 to3 per cent. We can procure paddy which has 17 per cent moisture content and that is all. Moreover,at places the grain colour is also green which will soon turn black. The damage to some of the heaps is about 60 per cent while on an average the damage is around 40 per cent. FCI cannot pick up this kind of paddy at all. This high moisture content and the damage to the variety,according to these officials,is due to the high humidity which was prevalent during the monsoon. Fungal growth flourishes when humidity is around 80 to 90 per cent and temperatures range between 25 and 30 degrees celsius. These were the conditions during the monsoon season this year. Moreover,these varieties are very old and have lost their vigour. With arrival of most of the early paddy varieties almost over,PUSA varieties will see major arrivals in the mandis from now. Guru said,I have seen this problem here now and the Chief Minister is personally monitoring the entire situation. We will hold a meeting on the issue and on the issue of hybrid varieties tomorrow to resolve the situation as soon as possible. Elaborating on how the state government is trying to smoothen out some of the procurement glitches,Guru added,Procurement is one of the largest economic activities in Punjab,which takes place every six months once for paddy and then for wheat. During this one month alone,some Rs 13,000 crore are passed on to farmers but in the last few years we have seen certain problems like shortage of field staff working for various agencies. The CM has asked all the procurement agencies to fill up all the field staff posts and agencies like Markfed and the Mandi Board have already done this,while other agencies are in the process of doing so. Then,to ensure that we produce what will be procured,the CM has ordered that seed certification,which earlier used to be done by the Agriculture Department,will from now on be carried out in consultation with the Food and Civil Supplies Department, he added. Guru informed that Punjab is expecting 140 lakh metric tonnes (MT) of paddy to arrive at 1,718 mandis,of which 56 lakh MT has already arrived. Out of this 56 lakh metric tonnes,54 MT have already been procured.
