Flour Power

West Bengal and a few Northeast states, including Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, have asked the food and civil supplies ministry to ...

West Bengal and a few Northeast states, including Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, have asked the food and civil supplies ministry to distribute wheat flour instead of wheat through the Public Distribution System in their states.

The food secretaries of the concerned states had a meeting today over the issue. The practice of distributing flour through PDS was discontinued in the late Nineties after complaints poured in over sub-standard flour being distributed.

Now these states say it is difficult for people living in the remote areas to make flour and that the states could also fortify the flour with irons and vitamins.

But the food ministry, which is worried about how the plan will be implemented, has told the state secretaries that the proposal will be examined before a decision is taken.

Meanwhile, minister for agriculture and food and civil supplies Sharad Pawar today announced at the state food secretaries meeting held today that the Centre is hopeful of procuring a target of over 79 million metric tonnes of paddy this year even though sowing operations started late because of the late onset of the monsoon.

He said in the last ten days there had been good progress in sowing of paddy and that this would tide the country over the anticipated shortfall of 8 million metric tonnes of paddy procurement.

He was also hopeful of achieving the procurement target of coarse grains like ragi, jowar and bajra.

Story continues below this ad

As of August 8 this year, the area under rice all over the country is over 223 hectares compared to 227.33 lakh hectares in 2004. The states showing additional coverage over the previous years are Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Haryana. The area coverage has been reported low in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Orissa. As for coarse cereals, the area coverage was 216.05 lakh hectares as of August 8 this year compared to 222.91 lakh hectares in the previous year.

The area coverage this year has been more in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh. But it is lower in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu as per the latest data.

Food secretaries from various states took part in the meeting.