Ujjain (Madhya Pradesh): Principal secretary food, civil supplies and consumer protection Umakant Umrao took a divisional review meeting of Rabi procurement year 2023-24, here on Friday. He told that the farmers who have registered will have the freedom to choose procurement centres as per their convenience.
It was informed that this year the government has fixed the support price of wheat at Rs 2,125 per quintal. During the review, it was said that the area under rabi crops has increased in proportion to last year. Umrao said that almost all the registered farmers have been verified.
The principal secretary instructed all the collectors of the division to continuously review the registration of farmers in their respective districts. They have been asked to ensure that after verification, a list of farmers' names is pasted in the gram panchayats and to determine the location of all earning centres.
The principal secretary instructed that all the collectors should keep a constant vigil on storage and transportation after purchase in the district and should continue to do physical verification and review the transportation action plan and asked the collectors to ensure an adequate number of gunny bags.
While reviewing the produce payment, he directed that the payment should be made regularly to the farmers, committee, transporters and warehouse owners.
Principal secretary directed all the collectors to ensure that the problems being faced by the District Procurement Committee meeting are resolved twice a week. He gave instructions to constitute a flying squad to monitor the procurement work. Along with this, instructions were given to ensure that the information about purchases in every society is registered in the e-procurement portal.
Explaining about non-standard wheat, principal secretary said that if shrivelled and broken grains, moist, partially damaged grains, other food grains or foreign elements are found in wheat, it is called non-standard level.
He instructed that a separate record be kept of such non-standard wheat.
All the collectors said in the meeting that this time only 60 per cent farmers have registered themselves on the support price as compared to last year. Traders are paying farmers more than the support price, so farmers are showing interest in selling their produce directly to traders. In many places, the traders have made a deal with the farmers only for the standing crop and this is happening everywhere.
During the review meeting, divisional commissioner Sandeep Yadav, MD of Civil Supplies Corporation Tarun Pithode, director, food, Deepak Saxena, collector Ujjain Kumar Purushottam, Ratlam collector Narendra Suryavanshi, Mandsaur collector Dilip Yadav, Neemuch collector Mayank Agrawal, Dewas collector Rishav Gupta, Agar-Malwa collector Kailash Wankhede, Shajapur collector Dinesh Jain, all district officers of Markfed, all food controllers and concerned officers were present.
