LUDHIANA:  Department Food and Civil Supplies asks procurement agencies to use 50 per cent of the old gunny bags used during the wheat season.
 

A recent order by the Department Food and Civil Supplies is likely to cause bitterness between the farmers’ union and the procurement agencies.

The department has asked the procurement agencies to use 50 per cent of the old gunny bags this season. Notably, the bags used during the wheat procurement were below the standards set by the government. As highlighted on April 30, the gunny bags that made way into the mandis weighed 500 grams as against the standard weight of 655 grams. This means, a farmer was not being paid a single penny for 155 grams of wheat.

The loss to the farmers which was about Rs 2 crore for wheat would be much more this time, as against the 90 lakh metric tonnes of wheat procured in Punjab, the figure for paddy is around 144 lakh metric tonnes. Simple calculations show that as paddy is packed in a 35-kilogram gunny bag, a farmer stands to lose Rs 40 for each tonne.