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Haryana’s paddy procurement unlikely to meet target: Officials
With procurement scheduled to officially conclude on November 15, paddy arrivals in Haryana’s mandis have reached 50.5 lakh metric tonnes (LMT), with the arrival season now in its final phase
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Strap/Blurb: Only 48 LMT procured against 58 LMT target so far; procurement season to be officially over by Nov 15
Haryana’s paddy procurement on minimum support price (MSP) during the ongoing Kharif procurement season is likely to fall below the set target with only 48.3 lakh metric tonnes (LMT) purchased so far against a target of 58 LMT. With the procurement officially be over on November 15, the arrival of paddy has reached to 50.5 LMT as the arrival of paddy in the mandis is in the last leg.
With procurement scheduled to officially conclude on November 15, paddy arrivals in Haryana’s mandis have reached 50.5 lakh metric tonnes (LMT), with the arrival season now in its final phase. The officials monitoring paddy procurement operations are of the view that the paddy procurement in the state may remain around 52 LMT against the last year’s 62 LMT. This will be the lowest procurement figures in the past several years as the state’s paddy procurement since 2021-22 remained above 55 lakh MT besides 53.9 lakh MT procured in 2024-25.
The previous lowest government procurement in Haryana during the past decade was recorded in 2016-17, when 53.4 LMT of paddy was purchased.
However officials attribute the shortfall amid reports of rain-related damage and a stricter physical verification exercise that exposed significant discrepancies in farmers’ crop registrations, particularly Basmati acreage declared as non-Basmati paddy to avail the benefit of government procurement.
The officials said that in the beginning 3,85,442 farmers registered 23,98,198.16 acres under Parmal or non-Basmati paddy, whereas only 2,01,515 farmers registered only around 10 lakh acres of Basmati varieties. In the field-level verification, ordered ahead of the procurement, officials have reportedly identified a substantial area under Basmati varieties that had been registered on the Meri Fasal Mera Byora (MFMB) portal as non-Basmati or Parmal paddy.
According to officials, the physical verification helped around 3 % fall in the total area under the non-basmati paddy which was found registered under Parmal varieties.
“The issue of registering Basmati under Parmal was largely limited to major paddy sowing districts of Karnal, Kurukshetra, Kaithal, Ambala, Yamunagar and Panipat. However, the harvesting was already started when the verification was completed but it still helped to identify 2-3 % of such area”, said an official associated with the physical verification.
“This physical verification also helped to check bogus procurement which is generally done by selling the paddy from outside states in the name of local farmers, who do not have grown basmati varities but have registered their crop as Parmal”, said another official from state agriculture department pleading anonymity.
Haryana agriculture minister Shyam Singh Rana said that entire produce of all farmers of the state will be procured on the MSP fixed by the centre. “Although procurement figures keep fluctuating depending on the acreage and crop yield, the field survey of all registered farmers helped establish the actual area under basmati and non basmati paddy in the state, he added.
This brought the actual area eligible for MSP-based procurement closer to the ground reality and prevented Basmati growers from registering their crop under varieties covered by government procurement. The latest procurement figures revealed that the Basmati procurement by private traders in the state has reached to over 22 lakh MT thus putting the state’s total paddy procurement to around 70 lakh MT.
