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A comprehensive strategy to increase the procurement of coarse grains was discussed and formulated at the conference of State Food Ministers on Wednesday, the Union Food Ministry said in a statement. Accordingly, it is estimated that a total of 26.14 lakh tonnes (lt) of coarse grains would be procured in the Kharif Marketing Season (KMS) 2023-2024 starting October 1. The expected distribution is 22.31 lt.
“This strategic focus on coarse grains/millets reflects a broader objective to strengthen the nutritional security of the beneficiaries’” it said.
Minister of Food and Public Distribution Piyush Goyal appreciated the efforts of the State governments for procuring and distribution of foodgrains and said all the States should work together with the Centre in the spirit of co-operative federalism.
Pending claims
He urged all States to submit their pending claims on dues with the Union government expeditiously so that they can be settled at the earliest.
The scale of reforms in procurement process of foodgrains is key to providing food security and stability to domestic prices of foodgrains.
Goyal also launched a new sugar-ethanol portal, where mills will be made to file returns on production, sales data regularly.
A demonstration of the Automated Multi-Commodity Grain Dispensing Machine “Annapurti” developed by the UN World Food Programme (UN-WFP) and Automatic Grain Analyzers developed for automated quality checking of grains was made at the conference.
Among other topics, grading of procurement centres to ensure uniformity and quality, effective implementation of Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), implementation of the SMART–PDS scheme for end-to-end computerisation of procurement and distribution of foodgrains, and transformation of Fair Price Shops (FPS) were discussed.
An action plan for the implementation of Route Optimisation study to bring down the distance involved in intra-State distribution, diversification of food basket through distribution of coarse grains/millets was also deliberated.
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