Lucknow , Jun 13 (FN Bureau) In a bid to safeguard the interest of farmers and to remove speculation raging in their minds on purchase restricted to a particular time limit, the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has announced that the Uttar Pradesh Government will continue to buy wheat from farmers. At a high-level meeting of officials chaired by CM Yogi Adityanath on Sunday to review the status of wheat procurement, the State government decided to continue to purchase of crops from the farmers.
“Till the single farmer is there to sell his produce, we will buy every single grain of wheat.We have made record procurement in the current Rabi Marketing season of 2021-22, despite pandemic. Along with that, the payment is being directly transferred into the bank accounts of farmers within 72 hours of purchase.”,asserted the CM. Meanwhile, he also directed the officials to monitor all the arrangements of purchase and payments. The current procurement of wheat in the state from farmers by agencies is quite near to touching an all-time record figure when total procurement reached 52.25 Lakh Metric Tonnes (LMT) benefitting more than 11.73 lakh farmers. This year’s purchase is set to surpass the earlier record of 52.92 LMT achieved during 2018-19. Interestingly, this has been accomplished during the trying times of the Covid-19 pandemic when the state was under partial corona curfew. While the figure for the corresponding period in the procurement season 2020-21 was just 30.37 LMT. The government has increased the MSP of wheat from Rs 1,925 in 2020-21 to Rs 1,975 in 2021-22. Besides, the number of procurement centres has been increased from 5000 last year to 6,000 this time.