Rabi wheat is ready. Is government?

With the dark clouds of coronavirus spreading thick and fast, for governments in the southern states, it is a blessing in disguise that they do not have to procure any significant quantities of food grains from the ongoing rabi crop. But in other states, for instance, Punjab and Haryana, about 12.9 and 9.32 million metric tons of wheat were supposed to be procured by their government agencies, respectively, for redistribution across the country. The economic value of this procurement at Minimum Support Price (MSP) as declared by the Government of India (@Rs 1,925/quintal), would be Rs 2,488.41 crore and 1,794.10 crore, respectively, and ought to have started from the middle of March. But the pandemic has upset this process and has left farming communities and the state and central governments in a fix.

Having learnt hard lessons from the Bengal famine of the 1940s, the Government of India established the Food Corporation of India (FCI) to procure the food grains from surplus states and to redistribute them to deficit states elsewhere. Procurement of food grains through FCI has the broad objectives of ensuring MSP to the farmers and ensuring the availability of food grains to the weaker sections at affordable prices. Besides, it enables the government to keep food grain prices under check. FCI has adopted both centralised and decentralised procurement systems, based on the quantity of food grains production in a particular state.

In the centralised system, the FCI on its own or through a state’s agencies procures food grains and moves surplus food grains, if any, after releasing that state’s share from the central pool for its Public Distribution System. On the other hand, in the decentralised procurement system (DCP), state government agencies procure food grains and hand over the surplus to FCI for the central pool. It is the responsibility of FCI to ensure proper storage of the food grains and distribute them across the country as per demand. Accordingly, the FCI has created huge storage space by itself and has also enabled state and private agencies to create significant storage space through incentives such as subsidies under the Rural Godown Scheme.

Punjab and Haryana, under the DCP system, contribute the major share of the central pool. By adopting a successful cropping pattern of rice during kharif and wheat during the rabi season, Punjab and Haryana have emerged as major growers and contributors to the central pool. During the current rabi season, Punjab and Haryana are supposed to supply 12.9 and 9.32 million metric tons of wheat, or more than two-thirds of the central pool.

In the normal course of events, wheat harvesting would have started from the third week of March onwards and every single grain that was brought to the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) yard by the farmers would have been purchased by government agencies at MSP. However, the catastrophic disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic has pushed this system into disarray. Because of the lockdown, the Punjab and Haryana governments have declared that they would start procurement from April 15 and April 20, respectively.

But, with each passing day since mid-March, the farming community’s problems have been mounting. They cannot leave the crop ready to be harvested in the field, waiting for the government to start its procurement. On the other hand, if the farmer proceeds to harvest the crop, he faces the problem of where to store it until the government starts procurement. The acute shortage of agricultural labour -- in the normal course, they would have come from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar -- poses a serious problem for government agencies in starting procurement from the middle of April. Indeed, if the lockdown is extended beyond mid-April, as seems likely at this point in time, it will be a nightmare for the farming community.

Following are some suggestions for state agencies to help the farming community by undertaking procurement and also to ensure continued food security for the country.

Prevention measures should be top priority: State procurement agencies should take the responsibility of disinfecting the market areas and providing suitable masks to every person involved, such as department personnel, farmers, labourers, transporters, etc.

Establishing new but smaller APMC yards: To prevent bottlenecks, every existing APMC yard should be restructured in such a manner that they can operate from different places and help in the prevention of the spread of the virus.

Keeping the possibility of extension of the lockdown and a further delay in the start of government procurement, in a worst-case scenario,

Identify all available storage space in every godown in the state and allocate the space to farmers in such a manner that the closest village gets priority of storage space.

Maximum utilization of railway network: With the central government providing three months of rations through the Public Distribution System, dispatch the current year’s produce directly to beneficiary states, instead of the usual practice of releasing old stock. This would reduce the risk of virus spread. This has the benefits of quick transfer to needy states, consequent distribution of food grains to needy people and using the railway network efficiently.

Store all the produce from farmers under the Cover and Plinth (CAP) method to overcome the storage area shortage.

No doubt, the coronavirus pandemic is teaching lessons to every sector. It is the responsibility of every affected organisation to revise its standard operating procedure and its preparedness levels and ensure that it is in a position to fulfill its mandate in the direst of circumstances.

(The writer is with KSNDMC)