No target fixed for paddy procurement in bihar, says minister

Observing that no specific target has been fixed for paddy procurement in Bihar this year, the state government today said that it was open to procurement as much paddy as farmers were

willing to sell through cooperative agencies. Observing that no specific target has been fixed for paddy procurement in Bihar this year, the state government today said that it was open to

procurement as much paddy as farmers were willing to sell through cooperative agencies. "We have deliberately not set a target for paddy procurement this year...we are ready to protect

as much paddy as farmers are willing to sell through cooperative agencies like the Primary Agriculture Credit Societies (PACS) and other agencies," Cooperative Minister Alok Mehta told

the assembly while replying to debate on his department's budgetary allocation of Rs 750.45 crore for 2017-18. He said that out of 8464 PACS in Bihar, paddy procurement centres have

been set in 7500 of them even as 521 Vyapar Mandals too have set up procurement centres and added that the entire exercise has been decentralised so that the farmers in every nook and corner

of the state can sell their produce and reap benefit of minimum support price. Stating that paddy procurement has been made transparent through automation of the entire process beginning

with procurement to transportation to rice mills and payments which the farmers can monitor online through Apps developed for integration of procurement process, Mehta said. The Cooperative

Minister said that the state government has the best interests of marginal farmers and sharecroppers in procurement process which guarantees them minimum available price in lieu of produces,

paddy in this case, and make available funds in hands so that they could use the money for sowing next crop. Recounting delay in starting paddy procurement process, he said the state

government had expanded window by a month and launched exercise from December itself, but due to high moisture content the desired results could not be achieved initially as the Centre did

not grant permission to increase moisture content limit in paddy by upto 17 per cent. From January this year, the state government stepped up procurement containing 17 per cent moisture

before it gave permission to procure paddy with 19 per cent moisture, Mehta said. (This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)