Delay in wheat procurement: growers suffer a loss of Rs 2.15 billion

Due to delay in wheat procurement, growers of only five districts in South Punjab have suffered a loss of Rs 2.15 billion where harvesting started from April 10. The Punjab Food Department (PFD) and the Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) time and again changed the dates for starting wheat procurement in the province, where as per tradition of last 25 years, procurement starts from 2nd or 3rd week of April.
This was stated by the Chairman Agri Forum Pakistan Muhammad Ibrahim Mughal while talking to a group of journalists, here on Monday. He said that now growers have heard that procurement would start from May 01, 2011. It is Sunday and it seemed procurement drive would actually start from May 02, which means that the loss to growers of the province might reach Rs 7 to 8 billion.
He said due to the delay in procurement, prices of wheat had crashed and in Dera Ghazi Khan, which is constituency of Senior Advisor Punjab Sardar Zulfikar Ali Khan Khosa, wheat is being sold at Rs 790 per maund against the government announced support price of Rs 950 per maund.
"The provincial food department is not intervening aggressively in the market and instead its staff communicated that procurement would be delayed till end of current month. Due to this lackluster activity, he maintained, farmers of Dera Ghazi Khan, Rajanpur, Rahim Yar Khan, Bahawalnagar and Bahawalpur have not been able to get due return.
He was of the view that wheat procurement had never been delayed in the past, terming it a conspiracy against growers. "The delay in procurement is benefiting middlemen and private buyers and in turn is definitely hurting interest of farmers," he maintained.
According to an estimate, he said, middlemen have already bought 650,000 lakh tons wheat from growers of these five districts at throwaway price, inflicting unbearable loss to farmers. He said delay was only benefiting middlemen, flour millers and feed millers.
Moreover, Mughal said, provincial food department and the PASSCO have reduced procurement target as compared to the last year. He said by starting procurement provincial food department work 42 days a year and if they start procurement this year by May 02, then they would work only 29 days and they had to buy 150,000 tons of wheat daily and it did not have such capacity, he alleged.
He strongly criticised Chief Minister of Punjab for not increasing wheat procurement target this year saying target for buying for the food department has been fixed at four million tons only against marketable surplus of seven million tons. He said that the chief minister was making agreement in China for promoting agriculture but if government fails to ensure due return of current production of growers, then there was no use of increasing the production.
Chief of Agri-Forum also criticised provincial food minister saying he had done nothing for betterment of farmers. "We demand that the government should reinstate previous food minister as he at least used to listen concerns of farming community," he stressed.
Meanwhile, an official of the food department said gunny bags distribution had been started in all divisions of central and southern Punjab with launching of procurement. The official added that in some districts of southern Punjab including Rajanpur, farmers had not started selling wheat to the food department yet. He expressed the hope that formal procurement would start in a day or two. He dispelled the impression that the food department had delayed procurement drive due to rainy weather in a last couple of week.