Intermittent showers delay arrival of wheat at Punjab mandis

Till April 18, the state’s total wheat arrival at the mandi was 39.82 lakh tonne while last year on the same date, the arrival by this time was 60.54 lakh tonne.

Officially, the procurement of wheat begins in the state on April 1 every year, but the crop starts arriving in the mandis only from April 7 or 8 and the pace of arrival picks up only after the Baisakhi festival (April 14). (Express photo by Nirmal Harindran)

Written by: Anju Agnihotri Chaba

3 min readApr 19, 2023 06:57 PM IST First published on: Apr 19, 2023 at 06:20 PM IST

The untimely rain in Punjab this year has delayed the harvest of wheat to a large extent and only if the weather remains favourable in the coming weeks will the state be able to harvest around 90 per cent of the total crop by the end of this month, said officials of the agriculture department.

Officials also added that the pace at which the crop is arriving in the mandis across Punjab has picked up in the last couple of days. Till April 18, the state’s total wheat arrival at the mandi was 39.82 lakh tonne while last year on the same date, the arrival by this time was 60.54 lakh tonne. Nearly 20.72 lakh tonne (34 per cent) less wheat has arrived in the mandis this year till April 18.

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This year, the state was expecting a bumper crop and the Centre had expected around 13 million tonne procurement from Punjab but the untimely rain, which began around March 16-17 and continued intermittently till April 6, not only delayed the harvest but also affected the yield and quality of the crop to a large extent. Officials said that while a total of 34.9 lakh hectare land was under wheat cultivation this year, the rain and strong winds damaged the crop on 13.46 lakh hectare land.

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In the last two days, around 8 lakh tonne wheat each day has reached the mandis across the state. There are a total of 2,675 notified mandis in the state, including 1,860 permanent and 815 temporary yards.

In 2020-21, the state had surpassed all previous records in wheat procurement ever and had contributed 132.22 lakh tonne of wheat to the central pool but last year, due to an early heat wave in March, Punjab recorded the lowest procurement in the last 15 years, which was 27 per cent lower compared to 2020-21. The Centre had procured 96.45 lakh tonne (9.6 million tonnes) while a total of 104.34 lakh tonne of wheat had arrived in the mandis.

Barring one year, 2019-20, Punjab has remained the highest contributor of wheat in the central pool in the past over five decades.