NAGAPATTINAM: Procurement of paddy by the Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Corporation (TNCSC) during the current samba season in the Cauvery delta region of Nagapattinam district has touched 1.70 lakh tonnes against the target of 1.38 lakh tonnes.

A.Bharathithasan, Senior Regional Manager of TNCSC, Nagapattinam, told The Hindu on Friday that all the 209 Direct Purchase Centres (DPCs) were functioning in the district and pointed out that the samba paddy procurement would touch the last year's procurement figure of 1.75 lakh tonnes in a few days.

Decline in daily arrival

He pointed out that the daily arrival of paddy to the DPCs came down drastically in the last one week at less than 1,000 tonnes.

He said that most of the paddy from the DPCs were moved to the storage points like cap storages, godowns and modern rice mills in the district and nearly 40,000 tonnes were moved to other districts by road and rail.

Storage points

Mr Bharathithasan said that about 80,000 tonnes of paddy was being kept in the various storage points including in the four modern rice mills for hulling purposes.

Nearly 40,000 tonnes of paddy would be given to the 10 private hulling agents and the modern rice mills would hull the remaining.

This rice is meant for public distribution in the State.

He said that despite a steep fall in the paddy yield during this samba season due to adverse seasonal conditions including heavy rains and floods during northeast monsoon in October, November and December last year, the farmers came forward and sold the paddy at the DPCs.

Fine variety paddy

The TNCSC offered Rs.600 per quintal for Grade `A' paddy variety and Rs.570 for common variety and the TNCSC had received fine variety paddy in most of the DPCs.

Agriculture department officials said on Friday that the harvest of samba and thaladi paddy crop raised in about 1.38 lakh hectares in the district was completed and the average yield was below one tonne per hectare.

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