Additional Chief Secretary Anurag Aggarwal on Thursday said that paddy procurement operations were being carried out seamlessly in all grain markets across Punjab.So far, over 84.48 lakh MT paddy has been arrived in the mandis of which 81.80 lakh MT has been procured by the various procurement agencies and payments of more than Rs 11531 crore to the farmers in their accounts.
Aggarwal was here in Khanna grain market to take stock of the procurement operations. Deputy Commissioner Surabhi Malik and Additional Deputy Commissioner Amarjeet Bains were also present.
While reviewing the procurement, the Additional Chief Secretary stated Punjab government led by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann was committed to ensure hassle-free and smooth procurement season and every grain of crops would be procured without causing any inconvenience to the peasantry.
He said the farmers were receiving their payments timely besides ensuring foremost priority to prompt purchase.Later on, Aggarwal went to village Libran where progressive farmers had adopted in-situ crop management wholeheartedly and became inspiration for others by not burning stubble.
He said that the by sowing the stubble in the fields, these farmers had saved the environment from harmful gases and earned various benefits in terms of increased yield of crops, improved soil health and others.
Then, Additional Chief Secretary also took round of Farm Gas Private Limited which converts paddy stubble in biogas. It was informed by its management to the Additional Chief Secretary that 102.5 metric tons of straw is being used daily and needs 35362 metric tons paddy stubble per year to run the plant.
He said that bio CNG was produced from stubble in this gas plant, which was used in vehicles and after gas extraction from straw and residue is used as fertilizer in fields.Prominent among present on the occasion included SDM Manjeet Kaur, Tehsildar Navdeep Bhogal, Chief Agriculture Officer Amanjeet Singh, DFSC Shifali Chopra and others.