Nizamabad falls short of paddy procurement target

The agriculture department officials are blaming the weather for the shortfall in procurement of paddy.

Nizamabad: The paddy procurement in the district for the Yasangi season has fallen short of target. The district administration has set a target to procure six lakh metric tonnes of paddy during the Yasangi season, but it managed to procure only 4.28 lakh MT.

The agriculture department officials are blaming the weather for the shortfall in procurement of paddy. They claimed that due unseasonal rain a large area of paddy crops were damaged resulting in low yield. Apart from this, the paddy brought to the marketyard got wet due to rain causing huge loss to the farmers. Following this, the procurement of paddy came down drastically, the officials explained.

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A total of 462 procurement centres were set up in the district and of them 417 centres worked under cooperative societies, 39 through IKP (Indira Kranti Patham) and six centers under Mission for Elimination of Poverty in Municipal Areas (MEPMA). The government had fixed the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for paddy ‘A’ grade Rs. 2203 per quintal and Rs.2183 per quintal for normal quality.

According to agriculture department officials, the normal area of paddy cultivation in the district during the Yasangi season was 3.21 lakh acres, but this time the farmers cultivated paddy in 3.17 lakh acres, 4,000 acres less than the normal. However, it was 17,000 acres more than last season, according to officials.

The district administration procured 4.28 lakh MT of paddy from 73,284 farmers in the district. The value of the paddy procured during the Yasangi farmers is about Rs.938 crore and the amount would be soon deposited in the accounts of famers, the officials stated. “Once the details are entered in the computer system, the money will be deposited in the accounts of the farmers,”the officials said.