Punjab: Tardy lifting leads to glut of paddy in state mandis
Jasdev Singh, a farmer who had reached a grain market in Patiala on Friday afternoon, said, “I had to struggle a lot to make space in the market to offload my paddy produce
There is huge glut in grain markets due to tardy lifting of paddy across the state. Farmers are facing inconvenience as there is no space left to unload fresh crop at mandis and they have to wait for hours for the same.
Jasdev Singh, a farmer who had reached a grain market in Patiala on Friday afternoon, said, “I had to struggle a lot to make space in the market to offload my paddy produce. Even after much struggle, I could unload only one tractor-trailer and have been waiting for hours now to unload the remaining paddy produce.”
The paddy arrival in markets has been going at a good pace over the past few days. As per the Punjab mandi board officials, 3.55 lakh metric tonnes (LMT) of paddy arrived on Friday, thereby taking the progressive (total) arrival to 35.03 LMT. Of the total paddy arrived in the market, 33.95 LMT have already been procured by various government agencies and private players, bot only 11.84 LMT of it could be lifted, which accounts only 35%. Around 65% of the procured paddy, therefore, is yet to be lifted from the markets.
Baldev Singh, a farmer, said, “The government should immediately take steps to improve the situation as paddy arrival will be at its peak in the coming days.”
As per government officials, the lifting process mainly got hit due to rain, labourers’ strike, and rice millers’ protest.
