Wheat harvesting picks up pace in Punjab

April 28, 2014- Recorder

As weather has become hot and dry during past week, the crucial harvesting of the strategic wheat crop has picked up in the southern, central and north Punjab and so far 30 percent harvesting has been completed, Director General Agriculture Extension Services, Punjab, Dr. Anjum Ali told Business Recorder here on Sunday.

He said the per acre crop yield indicates that Punjab would achieve the production target of 19.1 million tons but the bad news is that production of grams will fall from 0.51 million tons to 0.4 million tons due to inclement weather and damaging two spells of rains in late March and early April 2014.

The Punjab government has set up more than 380 wheat procurement centres across the province to purchase four million tons of wheat from the farmers at last year’s unchanged rate of Rs. 1200 per 40 Kg this season.

Meanwhile, wheat growers associations have expressed disappointment over the provincial government’s decision not to increase wheat procurement price despite Sindh government’s increase of Rs. 50 in the government/’s price of Rs. 1200 per 40 Kg.

President WGA Hamid Malhi told Business Recorder that wheat farmers were extremely worried about the future of their hard earned wheat crop which has been damaged by the rainy spell and the government’s total neglect of the agriculture sector. He demanded at least Rs. 1300 per 40 Kg to compensate the farmers losses.