By this first week of December, paddy is coming home from fields in most of the states of India. The condition of U.P., Bihar, and Jharkhand are the same. But the Government of Bihar is reportedly slow is purchasing rice from farmers.
In spite of claims of Government’s preparations on ground levels are still incomplete. Agencies have been reported to interfere in the process. They are pretending that they are unwilling to purchase rice due to more than 17% moisture in grains.
Since farmers do not have sufficient space to keep their rice, they are bound to sell their produce to the middlemen on low prices.
The Government has fixed the support price for paddy rupees 1880 per q. for A grade paddy and the support price for ordinary paddy is rupees 1868 per q.
The Government of Jharkhand has fixed rupees 1868 per q. as support price for the ordinary category of paddy. It has fixed rupees 182 per q. as bonus price. It has fixed the paddy collection centres at each block of districts.
Co-operative officers and Jan Sevaks have been deputed on each centre.
A total of six rice mills have been allotted in Ranchi to receive paddy. CC cameras have been installed in each rice mill.1st December has been fixed as the date of purchase of rice.
On the other hand Bihar has started purchasing rice since 23rd November 2020. All the Deputy Commissioners have been directed to take care of the process of purchase and storage.
Not even 250 q. of rice could have been purchased from farmers on the place of fixed target of 30 lakh metric tons so far.
Farmers are in a difficult position as many of them have to empty their fields for the cultivation of wheat while others are in urgent need of money for the marriage of their daughters.
Bumper production of rice has been observed this year as compared to the previous year. So, farmers are hopeful to receive some money in return to their crop.
The process of the registration of farmers for the sale of paddy is very slow in Bihar and so far up to 88317 farmers only could have been registered.
In districts of Jharkhand and Bihar and also of U.P. here are no problems of paddy stubbles. Most of the paddy is harvested manually and stubbles are not left in the fields.
Paddy stubbles are collected, stored and cut into pieces to serve as meals to cattle after mixing with green chaff in U.P., Bihar, Jharkhand and some other neighboring states. They don’t have to burn the paddy stubbles.
But in bigger states like Haryana and Punjab most of the harvesting process depends on machines. They don’t domesticate too much a number of cattle except the milch cattle. This is the reason of the problems of paddy stubbles in these states.
