High wheat procurement may reduce supplies in open market, says Sen

Pointing out that significant amount of wheat has been procured by the governments of certain states where the production has fallen, Sen said, “the consequence is that in many of these states you will find less wheat in the market.”

Delivering a talk on Inflation recently at the Monday Group, a Congress-backed think-tank, Sen said there could be problems in states like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, as wheat procurement has increased significantly despite dip in output. “This year a lot of procurement has taken place from states which are not traditionally wheat procurement states. About a million tonne (MT) has come from Rajasthan, nearly 3 MT are going to come from Uttar Pradesh and 2.5 MT have come from Madhya Pradesh. And about half-a-million ton each has come from Bihar and Gujarat,” he said. Sen said the classic case is that of Madhya Pradesh, where the total production has come down by 1 MT to 6 MT, but the state’s contribution to the central pool has increased several fold from 3 lakh tons to about 2.5 MT.

Amid record wheat output estimate, here comes the dampener the country’s wheat production may fall by about half a tonne per hectare in 10 years if suitable steps are not taken to tackle climate change, says the ‘Wheat Report 2008: Future Tense’, a study by Assocham and Agriwatch. According to a current estimate, the average wheat production in the country stands at 2.6-2.7 tonne per hectare.