Why Centre Sets Lower Paddy Procurement Target Of 708.64 LT For KMS 2026-27?

On Tuesday, the Centre has set a paddy procurement target of 708.64 lakh tonnes (LMT) for the 2026-27 Kharif Marketing Season, which will start on October 1. Moreover, the target is lower than the actual procurement levels recorded in each of the previous three seasons.Notably, the target was finalised after a review meeting with state food secretaries, which was chaired by Union Food Secretary Sanjeev Chopra.

What was the Food Ministry’s statement regarding Paddy procurement target?

In addition, the Food Ministry said in a statement: “Following deliberations with states/UTs, the paddy procurement estimates for the ensuing Kharif Marketing Season (KMS) 2026-27 were fixed at 708.64 LMT in terms of paddy.  Besides this, the actual Kharif paddy procurement was around 720.74 LT as of August 5 this year. In 2024-25, it was at 708.85 LT and 689.56 LT in 2023-24. The scaled-down target reflects reduced acreage of 414.10 lakh hectares as of August 31, against 428.46 lakh hectares a year earlier. Kharif paddy production for 2025-26 is estimated at 123.92 million tonnes.

Moreover, the actual outcomes will rely on production, state operations and market arrivals. Not only this, but the meeting also approved Improved Rice under PMGKAY with rigid norms such as broken raw rice grains capped at a percentage and parboiled rice at 5 per cent from 16 per cent. Significantly, this is effective from the Kharif Marketing season 2026-27.
Besides this, coarse grain procurement is estimated at 18. 85 LT, and the new storage policy actually aims for 131 LT additional capacity.  Moreover, the Vehicle Location Tracking system rollout is targeted by December 2026. The states, including Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Karnataka and Chhattisgarh, were identified for best practices.