Sourcing of paddy from Kharif by Food Corporation of India (FCI) and state government agencies got off to a quick start. Until Saturday, 1.72 million tonnes (mt) of cereals were purchased from farmers, 58% more than a year ago.
Arrivals of paddy in the mandis of Punjab and Haryana, major contributors to central pool stocks, are accelerating.
In Punjab, the biggest contributors to the central pool, agencies bought 0.43 tonnes of paddy till Saturday, down 17% from the same period a year earlier. Officials said purchases will pick up speed over the next two weeks as in some areas harvest has been delayed due to recent rains.
However, in Haryana, agencies purchased 0.87 tonnes of grain under the Minimum Support Price (MSP) operation, 80% more than a year ago.
“We were expecting picking arrivals by the middle of this month, but most of the mandis are currently seeing heavy arrivals of grain,” a market officer from the Agricultural Commodities Marketing Committee (APMC) told FE, Karnal, the largest grain mandi in Haryana.
Meanwhile, more than 0.4 tons of paddy is procured from farmers in Tamil Nadu by government agencies while procurement operations have started in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
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This year’s rice supply campaign would be closely watched given the expected decline in production in the 2022-23 season, as insufficient monsoon rainfall in eastern regions is expected to negatively impact rice production. purchases for central pool inventory. The government aims to boost the supply of rice due to a drop in stocks due to the extension of the free ration program for the seventh time until the end of this year.
The paddy/rice conversion rate is 67%. After the paddy is purchased from farmers by the FCI and government agencies, it is handed over to millers to be processed into rice.
Despite an estimated drop of 6 tonnes in rice production in the 2022-23 crop year (July-June) from a record 130 tonnes in the 2021-22 crop year, the government had set a target slightly higher 51.8 tons kharif rice supply for 2022. -23 season.
Kharif’s rice supply was 50.9 tonnes for the 2021-22 season. The supply from Kharif contributes about 86% of the total rice procured from farmers by FCI and state agencies under the MSP operation.
Arrivals of paddy in the mandis of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are during the period of October to November, while arrivals of grain are from December to January, in the ‘Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and other key producing states.
During the 2021-22 supply season, FCI purchased over 59.2 tons of rice.
The previous year, rice purchases reached a record 60.2 tonnes. Rice production reached a record 130.29 tonnes in the 2021-22 crop year.
At the beginning of this month, the stock of rice held with FCI was around 22 tons. This stock excludes 9.5 tons of rice which have not yet been received from the millers. Current rice stocks far exceed buffer stock standards of 10.2 tons.
States such as Punjab, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh contribute significantly to the central rice pool which is used to provide grain to beneficiaries under the national law on food security and the free quota scheme. Rice purchased from grain-surplus states is also used to maintain a safety stock with FCI.
The government had earlier increased the MSP of the common paddy variety by more than 5% to Rs 2,040 per quintal for the 2022-23 season from Rs 1,940 per quintal the previous season.
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