CHENNAI: Paddy procurement by the Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Corporation in the current kuruvai season in delta districts was negligible despite a production of about 2.6-lakh tonnes. The Corporation managed to procure just six tonnes till the end of the week.

Though no target had been fixed, the Corporation hoped to purchase at least 75,000 to one lakh tonnes in the current season. But there were hardly any arrivals at the Corporation's purchase centres. In fact, there was no demand from farmers to the district Collectors for opening DPCs in their areas.

Till 2001, the Corporation was getting 1.5-lakh to 2-lakh tonnes in kuruvai and over 10-lakh tonnes in samba. But after that, procurement was almost nil during kuruvai except in 2004 when it received about 16,500 tonnes.

Normally, about 2.07-lakh hectares are brought under kuruvai. But this year, due to inadequate storage at the Mettur Reservoir in June, farmers with bore well facility alone raised kuruvai on about 58,000 hectares.

As the average productivity was 4.5 tonnes per hectare, about 2.6-lakh tonnes of paddy was produced. The Corporation announced that apart from DPCs, regional godowns would purchase paddy for the convenience of farmers.

According to a Corporation official, there was practically no demand from farmers for opening DPCs. Only in Thanjavur district there were some representations at the agriculturists' grievance day meeting.

The official attributed the poor procurement to the higher price offered by private traders. Under the decentralized procurement scheme, farmers had an option to sell their produce either to the Corporation or to private traders.

This year, private traders offered Rs. 400 for fine variety and Rs. 350 for common variety per bag of 60 kg respectively as against the Rs. 360 and Rs. 342 offered by the Corporation.

The official said in the past month, arrivals from Andhra Pradesh, the major supplier for the State, was also less. Due to heavy rain there was not much movement of rice from the neighbouring State. So local traders offered better price to the delta farmers. Moreover, a majority, who cultivated kuruvai in the current season, were big farmers.

They might have sold their produce to private traders who were ready to lift the stock from their farms whereas farmers would have to take their paddy to DPCs.

The Corporation official was confident that in the next samba season the procurement would be heavy. As the condition of the crop was good, they expected not less than 12-lakh tonnes.

However, delta farmers had a grouse against the Corporation. They said the Corporation did not take an active interest in purchasing paddy. This forced them to sell paddy at less than Rs. 325 to Rs. 350 per bag of 60 kg to private traders. Though there was no distress sale, the return for farmers was not commensurate with the production cost.

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