• Investment World
• eWorld
• Brand Line
• Mentor
• Life
• Brand Quest
• The New Manager

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Cross Currency

• Rates
  
  

Shipping

• Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources
• In Focus
• In Depth
• Events 2007

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• The Hindu ePaper
• Business Line
• Business Line ePaper
• Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

M.R. Subramani

Khanna (Punjab), April 13 Daily workers, mostly youth, at the Panipat grain market in Haryana find it better to kill their time playing cricket.

In Karnal in the same State, the workers find it better to either take a nap or discuss the latest rumours.

In Sirhind in Punjab, they are scarcely visible in the evening. In Moga, some 90 km from there, the workers greet you without enthusiasm.

And in Khanna in Punjab, the labourers are agitated in view of the high moisture content in the arrivals of the new wheat crop and they are being forced to work more without a matching wage increment.

In short, wheat arrivals in Punjab and Haryana have been delayed. Arrivals are expected to gather momentum from April 15 and the trade is gearing up for it.

“Arrivals are meagre as last week’s rain has affected harvest. Only the crop that have fallen are being harvested. For this, farmers have to engage combine harvester, which makes things hard by sucking the moisture from the soil,” says Mr Kewal Krishan, a commission agent in Moga market.

“Wheat is arriving in the market with high moisture. It takes time to dry and then sell,” says Mr Rajinder Sud, a flour mill owner who has lapped up about half a tonne wheat that arrived at the Sirhind market at Rs 1,000 a quintal. The price is same as the minimum support price announced by the Centre for procuring wheat. Hailstorm and rains, seen untimely in the wheat growing areas, hit Punjab and Haryana recently.

It has to an extent triggered panic but trader sources say the fears are exaggerated. “Sure, there is some loss say between one and two per cent. But not as some try to project,” says Dr B. Mishra, Project Director of Directorate of Wheat Research in Karnal.

However, there is some unanimity that some of the wheat arrivals would lack in lustre in view of the weather problems.

But Mr Jagjit Singh, a farmer-cum-commission agent at the Khanna market, says hailstorm has felled the wheat crop in areas such as Mansa and Jalandhar in Punjab. In comparison, wheat growing areas in Haryana seem to have been the least affected. “Nearly 40,000 tonnes of wheat arrived in Haryana mandis last week and all have been bought by the Centre through Food Corporation of India,” says Mr Vinod Kapoor, former Chairman of the Wheat Products Promotion Society.

In contrast, in Punjab, hardly any purchase by the Centre is visible. The sparse quantities that are arriving in the markets are being bought by flour mills which operate in the vicinity of the respective markets.

“There are two reasons for this. One, the arrivals are in very small lots. Two, a high moisture content of 16-18 per cent prevents the Centre from purchasing the wheat,” says Mr Raj Sud, a trader in Khanna market.

The Centre buys only if the moisture content is between nine and 12 per cent. Though farmers and a section of the trade say there could be a fall in wheat production from the 74.81 million tonnes projected by the Centre, a majority of the trade and officials such as Dr Mishra are confident that production would be around 75 million tonnes.

And it is excluding last year’s wheat crop which seems to have been held over by farmers and has begun to find its way into the market in small lots.

More Stories on : Wheat | Climate & Weather | Natural Calamities

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Wheat arrivals delayed as weather plays truant

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line