New Delhi: Farmers in two states of Helani, Punjab and Haryana, have been protesting for a long time after the central government introduced three agricultural laws. The issue that they are most concerned about is the MSP for agricultural commodities. Farmers in the two states are selling more than half of their wheat and two-thirds of their paddy to the government at Rs. Other states have lower rates. So, they would only resort to this as a last resort. According to the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and General Distribution, between 2014-15 and 2019-20, the average wheat production in Punjab was 1.8 million tonnes and in Haryana 11.4 million tonnes. Of this, 7.5% was harvested by the government. At the same time, Madhya Pradesh sold 38% of wheat, Rajasthan 14% and Uttar Pradesh 10% of wheat at MSPP prices. In Gujarat, Bihar and Maharashtra, an average of 1.5 million tonnes of wheat was produced during this period. However, these states sold less than 1% of the wheat to the government at the MSSP price. During the talks, the country produced a total of 300 million tonnes of jewelery, while the government collected 30.7% of it. More than 7% of the wheat harvested came from Punjab and Haryana. An analysis of the rice data shows that between 2014-15 and 2019-20, Punjab produced an average of 121 lakh tonnes of paddy, of which 7% was harvested by the government. Haryana produced 4 lakh tonnes of paddy during this period, of which 7% was harvested. There are 15 other major rice-producing states in the country with an average annual production of more than 3 million tonnes. At the same time, the collection rate is 83% for Telangana, 71% for Chhattisgarh, 55% for Andhra Pradesh and 51% for Odisha. Six of the country’s top 15 rice-producing states have sold more than half of their paddy to MSPPs. The collection rate for MGSPs is less than 20-30% in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, 10-20% in Tamil Nadu, Bihar, West Bengal and Maharashtra and less than 10% in Jharkhand, Karnataka and Assam.
