During FY 2019-20, the overall commodity handling of pulses increased by 78% over previous year.
MAHA Farmers Producer Co (MahaFPC), which is a federation of 303 farmer producer companies in Maharashtra, has announced that it has been successful in keeping its procurement operations under the Government Price Support Scheme (PSS) running and has crossed Rs 500 crore mark despite the current Covid pandemic, top officials of the federation said.
The federation has been active in procurement of agri-commodities, especially tur and chana in the last four months, said Yogesh Thorat, MD, MahaFPC. As a state level agency of Nafed & FCI, MahaFPC has doubled its standalone procurement operations of pulses in this year by crossing the 2017-18 PSS procurement of Tur. “In kharif marketing season of 2019-20, MahaFPC has procured 26,843 tonne of tur from 32,832 farmers. And as a part of rabi marketing season of 2020-21, procured 70,666 tonne of chana from 47,246 beneficiary farmers,” he said.
Thorat said that the cumulative valuation of the procurement is Rs 500 crore. Out of this, 60% farmers’ payment has been disbursed directly into their bank accounts, he added.
MahaFPC’s policy of decentralised procurement centres in the production zone as cluster approach helped to decongest Agriculture Produce Market Committees (APMCs) and maintain the social distancing for the safety of the farmers against the backdrop of novel coronavirus, he said.
During FY 2019-20, the overall commodity handling of pulses increased by 78% over previous year. MahaFPC has set up network of around 160 FPCs in 19 districts of Maharashtra for 3,000 tonne per day capacity of collection, aggregation and warehousing of pulses during FY 2019-20.
MahaFPC was also recognised as a state level agency for procurement of onion and handled 25,000 tonne last year, Thorat said. In FY 2020-21, the small and marginal members of farmer producer companies are expected to get assurance of Minimum Support Price (MSP) for pulses and oilseed.
