As Apeda drags its feet on deciding agency, annual Basmati crop survey delayed

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The Basmati Export Development Foundation (BEDF) under the government’s agricultural export promotion body Apeda is yet to float tender for the annual Basmati crop survey this year, even as summer sown Pusa Basmati 1509 has started arriving in the mandis (agriculture market yards).

Last time, the tender was floated in February 2022 and the contract was awarded in June 2022 for two years. The BEDF was supposed to float the tender earlier so that the agency could have mobilised the manpower on the ground when the Basmati crop was at certain height, industry experts said.

The Basmati crop survey assumes importance in the wake of State governments’ focus on shifting farmers from non-Basmati to Basmati in Haryana and Punjab and also to help exporters in their negotiations with foreign buyers.

Six reports

There are six reports to be prepared by the agency which gets selected for the survey and the first report was submitted by July 31, 2022, by LeadsConnect Services, the agency that did the survey, sources said. The agency has informed BEDF that it can undertake the survey at short notice for which a decision needs to be taken in a week, sources said.

“What is the point of a survey when the crop has started getting harvested by farmers. Such decision needs to be timely and quick. If BEDF floats a tender now, it will take another month and early kharif-grown Basmati will start arriving from October,” an industry expert said.

Covers 85 districts

According to the first survey report, submitted by LeadsConnect on July 31 last year, the scope of the report (Vol. I) was to provide field and satellite data-based crop acreage of total paddy in different States of the study area. The report covered the estimates of field survey-based acreage estimation of all paddy, information of Basmati varieties, other non-notified selected varieties found in field during survey and details of seed distribution in the study area.

The study has covered total 85 districts — 23 districts of Punjab, 30 in Uttar Pradesh, 22 in Haryana, 3 in Jammu & Kashmir, 4 in Uttarakhand, 2 in Himachal Pradesh and Delhi.

As per the final report submitted in December 2023, total Basmati rice acreage was 21,35,360 hectares and production was estimated at 98,45,750 tonnes in the study area during kharif 2023.