First meeting of the Inter-Ministerial Committee for procurement of Kharif 2025-26 season was held

– Construction of roadmap for the Kharif season is underway
– Priority given to farmers’ convenience
– Instructions to construct permanent model mandis with inter-departmental coordination
– 29 percent more farmers registered for kharif season than last year

Bhubaneswar-08/09/2025:Today, the first meeting of the Inter-Ministerial Committee for procurement of Kharif 2025-26 season was held at the conference room of Lok Seva Bhavan under the chairmanship of Deputy Chief Minister and Minister of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment, Energy, Shri Kanak Vardhan Singh Deo. In the meeting, Deputy Chief Minister Shri Singh Deo gave instructions to prioritize the convenience of farmers.

It has been decided in the meeting to construct permanent model mandis with the coordination of various departments. The government has planned to procure the Kharif crops by the end of November. Accordingly, the roadmap is being prepared. It has been reported that, due to the procurement cost Rs 3100 per quintal by the government, many non-paddy growing farmers have also shown interest in paddy cultivation and shifted to paddy cultivation. Therefore, there has been a 29 percent increase in the registration of new farmers as compared to the previous year.
Apart from this, it has been decided to build more warehouses for post-purchase management of paddy. This will be done by FCI, Cooperation Department, and State Warehousing Corporation. Similarly, apart from the procurement of a certain amount of rice by FCI, the surplus rice management is very crucial. For this purpose the government is planning to supply the broken rice to ethanol plants for the ethanol production, distribution of free rice to families under below poverty line through various schemes, and export to other countries have been discussed. And opening more rice mills, upgrading existing mills to hybrid mills have also been discussed.

Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Shri Suresh Pujari, Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Minister Shri Krushna Chandra Patra, Cooperation Minister Shri Pradeep Bal Samanta, Chief Secretary Shri Manoj Ahuja, Additional Chief Secretary Shri Hemant Kumar Sharma, Principal Secretary, Finance Shri Sanjeev Kumar Mishra, Agriculture Dr. Arabinda Kumar Padhee, Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Shri Sanjay Kumar Singh, Commissioner cum Secretary, Cooperation Shri Rajesh Prabhakar Patil were present in the meeting and expressed their well-considered views on the preparedness.