Jalandhar April 17:
In what may be seen as an impact of the prevailing freak weather conditions across the region, Punjab mandis have witnessed an unprecedented around 20 times dip in arrival of wheat this time.
A combination of cloudy weather, mild hailstorm, and gusty winds, which swept entire Punjab on Friday night and Saturday evening, instilled a fear psychosis among farmers, though no major damage has been reported to the crop so far. "No damage to wheat has been reported from any of the mandis. There are no reports of any discolouration either," said DS Grewal, Punjab Food and Civil Supplies secretary.
Farm expert Naresh Gulati said lodging would cause discolouration of grains only in case wheat crop gained excess moisture. "It will force farmers to resort to manual harvesting of the crop in lodging affected patches. Farmers should harvest their crops only after grains turn dry," he said. The sudden and unexpected decline in the arrival of wheat could be gauged from the fact that just around 2.02 lakh metric tonne of the crop had landed in Punjab mandis till Friday evening as compared to a whopping 40.26 lakh metric tonne on the same day last year.
The Punjab Food and Civil Supplies department authorities are worried that the delay in the onset of arrival by about a fortnight could make things difficult for them as they would be left with lesser time to lift the crop from markets. Officially, the wheat procurement season started from April 1 and would last till June 30. But procurement usually gets over by May 15 due to sudden glut-like rush of grains in mandis during this period. Punjab was expecting arrival of around 110 lakh metric tonne of wheat in mandis this time.
The Food and Civil Supplies' statistics revealed that Punsup had topped the list of government procurement agencies by procuring 56,827 metric tonne by Friday evening. It was followed by Punjab Markfed (46,716 MT), Punjab Agro (38,205 MT), FCI (20,606 MT), Pungrain (20,474 MT) and Punjab Warehousing Corporation (17,599 MT).
In what may be seen as an impact of the prevailing freak weather conditions across the region, Punjab mandis have witnessed an unprecedented around 20 times dip in arrival of wheat this time.
A combination of cloudy weather, mild hailstorm, and gusty winds, which swept entire Punjab on Friday night and Saturday evening, instilled a fear psychosis among farmers, though no major damage has been reported to the crop so far. "No damage to wheat has been reported from any of the mandis. There are no reports of any discolouration either," said DS Grewal, Punjab Food and Civil Supplies secretary.
Farm expert Naresh Gulati said lodging would cause discolouration of grains only in case wheat crop gained excess moisture. "It will force farmers to resort to manual harvesting of the crop in lodging affected patches. Farmers should harvest their crops only after grains turn dry," he said. The sudden and unexpected decline in the arrival of wheat could be gauged from the fact that just around 2.02 lakh metric tonne of the crop had landed in Punjab mandis till Friday evening as compared to a whopping 40.26 lakh metric tonne on the same day last year.
The Punjab Food and Civil Supplies department authorities are worried that the delay in the onset of arrival by about a fortnight could make things difficult for them as they would be left with lesser time to lift the crop from markets. Officially, the wheat procurement season started from April 1 and would last till June 30. But procurement usually gets over by May 15 due to sudden glut-like rush of grains in mandis during this period. Punjab was expecting arrival of around 110 lakh metric tonne of wheat in mandis this time.
The Food and Civil Supplies' statistics revealed that Punsup had topped the list of government procurement agencies by procuring 56,827 metric tonne by Friday evening. It was followed by Punjab Markfed (46,716 MT), Punjab Agro (38,205 MT), FCI (20,606 MT), Pungrain (20,474 MT) and Punjab Warehousing Corporation (17,599 MT).
