The Centre’s gram procurement from Gujarat so far this year has zoomed to more than double the highest quantity procured from the state ever.
According to data available with the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (Nafed), the total gram or chana procurement from the state stood at 3.5 lakh MT, as of 5 pm Sunday with around 1.77 lakh of the 3.28 lakh registered farmers having been covered.
This indicates an increase of 1.52 lakh MT over the past 20 days. As of April 4, the procurement stood at 1.98 lakh MT. For comparison, the Centre had procured 1.51 lakh MT from Gujarat during the entire procurement season of 2020-21, the highest ever from the state.
Hence, at 3.5 lakh MT, this year’s procurement is more than double that quantity with five more weeks left in the ongoing procurement season.
The Central government has fixed the minimum support price (MSP) of gram at Rs 5,230 per quintal (10 quintals make one MT). At that rate, the procurement from Gujarat so far is worth Rs 1,833 crore.
“We have sent SMS alerts to 2.22 lakh farmers so far, asking them to bring their harvest to the nearest procurement centre. Of them, 1.77 lakh farmers have actually turned up at procurement centres with their produce. The procurement is somewhat slow due to low stocks of jute bags needed for bagging gram procured from farmers. But we are confident of covering all farmers by the time the procurement operations end in May,” Dilip Sanghani, chairman of Gujarat State Cooperative Marketing Federation Limited (Gujcomasol) said.
Gujcomasol is the cooperative body of Gujarat running procurement centres on behalf of Nafed in the state.
As per the Nafed data, the highest amount of procurement — 80,222 MT — has been made from Rajkot covering 41,152 farmers. This is followed by Jamnagar (54,587 MT from 26,397 farmers), Junagadh (38,408 MT from 19,725 farmers), Amreli (33,741 MT from 16,685 farmers), Devbhumi Dwarka (23,204 MT from 11,620 farmers), Gir Somnath (19,542 MT from 11,415 farmers) and Morbi (14,486 MT from 7,362 farmers).
The 11 districts of the Saurashtra region together account for 2.88 lakh MT of the procurement so far covering 1.46 lakh farmers.
Outside Saurashtra, Mehsana (13,500 MT from 6,142 farmers, Patan (12,982 MT from 5,719 farmers and Sabarkantha (5,354 MT from 3,220 farmers) in the north Gujarat region are the districts where sizable procurements have been made by the Centre.
A total of 3.28 lakh farmers have registered themselves with the state government for selling their gram to the Central government this season. The procurement had begun on March 1 and Nafed, which is procuring the pulse crop on behalf of the Central government, has approved setting up 187 procurement centres across the state.
The Central government has allotted Nafed quota of procuring 4.65 lakh MT gram from Gujarat farmers. At 2.22 lakh, while around 67 per cent of registered farmers have been covered so far, 75 per cent of allotted quota has been utilised.
“But farmers need not worry about the quota. We have written to the government to increase the quota. Likewise, the state government will also request the Centre to increase the quota. We are hopeful that every farmer who has registered to sell his/her gram will get an opportunity to sell it to the government,” Sanghani further said. The government is crediting money in farmers accounts after around 15 days post procurement.
Besides Gujarat, Nafed is currently procuring gram from Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. The national procurement stands at 7.74 lakh MT and more than Rs 4,049 crore.
Gujarat accounts for half of the total procurement in the country, followed by Maharashtra at 3.22 lakh MT. Karnataka is third on the list at 62,219 MT. In Andhra Pradesh, procurement stands at 36,706 MT while quantities procured from other states are negligible.
