Government sets wheat procurement target of 3-32 million tonnes for 2024-25 season
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New Delhi. The government has set the wheat procurement target for the 2024-25 Rabi marketing season at 32 million tonnes. The Food Ministry gave this information on Thursday. The government’s wheat procurement target is being considered somewhat low. The Agriculture Ministry expects record wheat production of 114-115 million tonnes in the crop year 2023-24 (July-June). Despite this, the procurement target has been kept low by the government. On Wednesday, a meeting of food secretaries of states was held under the chairmanship of Union Food Secretary Sanjeev Chopra in the national capital. After discussion in this meeting, the target for wheat procurement has been fixed.
“After deliberations, the wheat procurement estimate for the upcoming Rabi marketing season 2024-25 has been fixed at 3 to 32 million tonnes,” the ministry said in a statement. Apart from wheat, the ministry has also revised the wheat procurement estimate in the case of rice. The target of Rabi paddy procurement has been fixed at 90 lakh to 1 crore tonnes. The government has also set a procurement target of 6,00,000 tonnes for Rabi coarse grains/millets (millets). In the meeting, the Center has asked states and union territories to focus on procurement of millets for diversification of crops and increasing nutrition in the diet.
The government had procured about 26.2 million tonnes of wheat in the 2023-24 season against the target of 36.2 million tonnes. Wheat procurement in 2022-23 was only 1.88 crore tonnes against the target of 4.44 crore tonnes. Procurement was low due to decline in production. The Food Secretary had recently said that the farmers’ agitation on the Punjab-Haryana border will not have any impact on procurement operations. Generally wheat is procured from April to March. However, this year the Center has given permission to the states to purchase wheat according to the arrival of the crop in the market. In most states, arrival of wheat starts in the first fortnight of March.
Uttar Pradesh and some wheat producing states have indicated that they will start procurement from March 1. The government procures wheat and paddy at minimum support price (MSP) for public distribution to the central pool. These are distributed under the National Food Security Program and other welfare schemes. At the beginning of each marketing season, the central government fixes procurement targets in consultation with the states and the Food Corporation of India (FCI).
Disclaimer: IndiaTheNews has not edited this news. This news has been published from PTI-language feed.
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