Govt’s aman purchase hits a record
The meals procurement office, for the first time since 1996, has bought the highest amount of aman paddy and achieved its target of shopping for six lakh tonnes of the grain grown in the monsoon.
It bought 6.27 lakh tonnes of aman paddy since November following harvests.
In the past 24 years, the public food office never succeeded in attaining goals of purchasing aman paddy, data from the food ministry showed.
This was the 1st time after 2010 that the federal government bought the paddy alongside rice-a decision that followed public outcry caused by farmers' losses for prices slumping this past year and growing require to get grains directly from farmers to make sure fair prices.
The meals ministry announced to get paddy from growers by the end of October with the aim to push up prices of the grain and help growers recoup losses, reducing its focus to get the grain only from millers.
The meals ministry estimated that the production of the year's aman paddy would cost Tk 21.55 a kilogramme (kg), down from Tk 25.30 the previous year.
It bought paddy at Tk 26 a kg predicated on a list of farmers given by the Division of Agricultural Expansion (DAE) and scrutinised by upazila procurement committees, according to a senior official of the Directorate General (DG) of Food.
This has been permitted for increased monitoring by the meals ministry and local administration, said the state.
Through the aman paddy purchase period that officially finished the other day, the DG of Foodstuff piloted procurement in 16 upazilas using mobile applications through which farmers may enroll their name.
Awareness campaigns by discipline level food office buildings also created fascination among farmers to bring their manufacture to hometown procurement centres, said the state, asking never to be named due to he's not authorised to talk to the media.
"They were better informed this time about the product quality parameters," the official explained, adding that farmers weren't aware about the product quality parameters for supplying paddy during the past.
They used to come back disheartened as field office buildings would decline to take the grain due to moisture content in the grain going past the 14 per cent limit, he added.
This is the highest amount of aman paddy purchased till date, said Md Tahmidul Islam, additional secretary in charge of procurement and supply at the meals ministry.
"Monitoring by ministry high-ups has paid."
The most recent purchase of aman paddy by the food office may be the second highest amount of unhusked grain after boro, the main crop.
The government bought the best 6.70 lakh tonnes of boro in 2016, info from the meals ministry showed.
Apart from paddy buy, the DG of Foodstuff bought 3.37 lakh tonnes of parboiled rice from millers at Tk 36 per kg and 43,400 tonnes of unboiled rice through the just concluded aman order season, in line with the food ministry data.
"It really is commendable. This shows that the government can buy paddy if it provides willingness," explained Akhter Ahmed, country director of International Foodstuff Policy Research Institute.
"It would be beneficial for farmers if the government buys paddy directly from producers within the next boro harvesting period," he said.
As drying of boro paddy was a challenge for farmers, the government could get paddy irrespective of the moisture content material and present it to millers for drying and milling, Ahmed said.
Quazi Shahabuddin, a past director general of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, said farmers will often have a higher marketable surplus during boro harvests in comparison to that of aman, the next biggest crop.
The government should purchase a higher level of paddy from farmers in the next boro season, he suggested.
