Farmers in Punjab have suffered damage to their standing wheat crop on 1.3 lakh acres, while there are fears of the quality of wheat crop on lakhs of acres being adversely hit by the unseasonal rains that have lashed the state in the past two weeks.
While the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution has relaxed the specifications for buying wheat in the neighbouring BJP-ruled Rajasthan, no such relaxations have been announced for Punjab yet. The issue will be taken up in a meeting between Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and Union Food Minister Pralhad Joshi on Friday.
Official sources in the Food and Supply department told The Tribune that since wheat matures early in Rajasthan as compared to in Punjab, the central inspection teams have visited the neighbouring state, assessed the damage and announced relief in quality specifications.
"Rains caused by western disturbances continued to lash Punjab till April 8, and the harvesting is delayed. We requested the Centre on Thursday to get the damage to crop quality evaluated. The issue will also be discussed in the meeting on Friday. As and when the central teams come for inspection and give their report, the quality specifications can be relaxed for Punjab," said a senior official in the Food department.
Farmers, commission agents and officials involved in the procurement process have been complaining that the wheat arriving in the mandis has higher-than-prescribed moisture content of 12 per cent (as high as 15 per cent in certain areas), besides grains suffering from lustre loss. Farmers have also been complaining that the yield will be less by 4-5 quintals per acre.
The state government expects that the lustre loss will be relaxed by up to 50 per cent and the limit of shrivelled and broken grains by up to 15 per cent against the existing 6 per cent.