Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh:
In Madhya Pradesh, wheat has not only grown in the fields this season, but also into a crisis. Across villages, heaps of harvested grain lie waiting, and the farmers who produced them are stranded outside procurement centres, tehsil offices, banks and online portals. The government promised a new era of scientific farming through artificial intelligence (AI), satellite imagery, drone surveys and digital crop mapping. But on the ground, the farmers are asking a painful question, if technology cannot recognise the wheat standing in his field, how can it decide his right to sell it?
In Bhairupura, the contradiction is visible from the first step into the village. Wheat is stacked in courtyards, loaded on tractor-trolleys, spread in threshing yards and waiting to be weighed. Yet, in the government’s digital records, some of these very fields are not wheat fields at all. The system has shown wheat as gram, mustard, tomatoes, chillies or even vacant land. A crop that the farmer has grown with sweat, debt and sleepless nights has vanished in a satellite image.
That one wrong entry has pushed families into panic. A farmer does not have the luxury of waiting for a software correction. He has loans to repay, marriages to conduct, labourers to pay and food to arrange at home. But instead of selling his wheat at the support price, he is being forced to prove the obvious that wheat is wheat.
The state government’s Agri-GIS systems, including ‘SARA’ and ‘Unnati’, were projected as a technological leap. Satellite images, drone surveys, field photographs, artificial intelligence and machine learning were supposed to make crop assessment transparent, scientific and time-bound. The government says more than 5.37 crore field images have been analysed and over 3 crore land parcels digitally mapped. It claims crop-identification accuracy has improved from 66 percent in 2022 to nearly 85 percent by 2025.
But for the farmer whose registration has been cancelled, that 15 percent gap is not a technical margin. It is the difference between getting Rs 2,625 per quintal and being forced to sell at Rs 1,700 or Rs 1,800. It is the difference between repaying a loan and sinking deeper into debt. It is the difference between a daughter’s wedding going ahead with dignity and a family scrambling for money.
Farmer Umesh Shriwas says the records have turned reality on its head. “They replaced gram with wheat and wheat with vegetables. How can they conduct a survey only through satellite? They should come to the farmer’s field and see what is actually growing there. Our registrations have been cancelled. In the mandi, wheat is not fetching more than Rs 1,800 to Rs 2,000. We are in deep distress,” he said.
The government says wheat is being procured at Rs 2,585 per quintal, with a Rs 40 bonus, taking the effective rate to Rs 2,625. But farmers whose registrations are stuck or slots are blocked are being pushed towards private mandis, where wheat is selling at far lower rates. The loss is not abstract. It is counted quintal by quintal, trolley by trolley.
A farmer lays on a wheat-filled trolley.
Shubham Gaur says the system has split his crop into fiction. “I have five khasras (agricultural land). All have wheat, but in the records, one has gram and another has tomatoes and chillies. I have 50 quintals lying here, but I can get only 30 quintals weighed. Where do I take the remaining 20 quintals? If I go to the mandi, tractor rental alone will cost Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,500. Here, wheat is selling at around Rs 2,600, but there it will fetch only Rs 1,700 or Rs 1,800. That is a loss of Rs 700 to Rs 800 per quintal, apart from transportation cost,” he said.
The crisis has not come from one error alone. It has been built layer by layer. First came repeated delays in procurement, with the government citing shortage of gunny bags. Then came restrictions in the e-uparjan, an online crop procurement management system. Farmers with holdings up to two hectares were prioritised. A limit of 1,000 quintals was placed on procurement at each centre. Double verification became another hurdle. And then satellite-based crop mismatch pushed thousands of registrations into uncertainty.
For the farmer, this is no longer a procurement process. It is an obstacle course.
Earlier, farmers say, the Patwari (illage-level government official in the Indian subcontinent responsible for maintaining land records) came to the field. There was a human witness to the crop. Mistakes could be pointed out on the spot. Now, they say, a distant system has passed judgement from the sky, and the farmer is left below to suffer the consequences.
Chhoteram Meena says he did not even know when the survey was conducted. “Wheat was shown as gram, gram as wheat. Earlier, the Patwari would come and we would know what was right and wrong. Now we do not even know when the survey takes place. Our wheat has also suffered due to rain. What is our fault? If the government refuses to procure it, where should we sell? Some farmers have taken loans from societies, some have weddings at home. The farmer is helpless. He has to sell,” he said.
That helplessness is now visible in village after village. Wheat is ready, but slots are not. Registration exists, but verification does not. Bank accounts exist, but direct benefit transfer (DBT) fails. Aadhaar is linked, but the link is not “active”. The farmer has moved from the field to the portal, from the portal to the bank, from the bank to the tehsil, and still his wheat remains unsold.
A farmer in his wheat field.
Arun Meena says he has been trying for days to book a slot. “They are telling us to go to the bank and link Aadhaar, but that is not working either, and it has been five days. I have been using the same account for the past three years. My wheat has not been weighed. There is a wedding at home and we are facing a lot of difficulty. Earlier, once registration was done, the slot was booked immediately and payment came after weighing. This time, even after linking Aadhaar, they are not activating it,” he said.
On paper, the government has announced relief. The wheat slot booking period has been extended until May 23. Fair Average Quality (FAQ) norms have been relaxed. The permissible limit for lustreless wheat has been raised to 50 percent, shrivelled grains from 6 percent to 10 percent and damaged grains up to 6 percent. Around 19 lakh farmers have registered for procurement. So far, 9.83 lakh farmers have booked slots to sell 60.84 lakh metric tonnes of wheat. Procurement has been completed from 5,08,657 farmers, amounting to 22.70 lakh metric tonnes, and payments worth Rs 3,575.11 crore have been made.
But these figures do not answer the farmers standing outside the system. They do not answer why a wheat field became a vegetable field in official records. They do not answer why actual production of 18 to 20 quintals per acre is being restricted by a procurement calculation of 16 quintals. They do not answer why, since March, nearly 20 lakh tonnes of wheat have reportedly been sold to private traders for around Rs 4,400 crore, much of it below minimum support price (MSP).
The state has set a target of procuring 100 lakh metric tonnes of wheat this year, compared to 77 lakh metric tonnes last year. But for the farmer who cannot even book a slot, the target is just another number. His problem is not the state’s ambition. His problem is access.
Food and Civil Supplies Minister Govind Singh Rajput has admitted that satellite discrepancies occurred, but he insists they are minor and that the system is functioning smoothly. “A satellite-based survey was conducted. In some places where wheat was shown, wheat was not found on the ground. There have been some minor irregularities, but they are not significant. Everything is proceeding smoothly now. Procurement began with small farmers, then medium farmers, and now large farmers are also being covered. Slot bookings are underway. The Chief Minister has directed that shade and drinking water arrangements be made everywhere. Officials and collectors are visiting procurement centres. No farmer is facing distress,” he said.
But that claim does not survive easily in Bhairupura, where farmers show wheat in their fields and errors in their records. If no farmer is distressed, then who are these men standing in queues with cancelled registrations, invalid accounts and unsold grain? If everything is smooth, why are farmers preparing to sell below MSP? If the irregularities are minor, why are lakhs of farmers caught in verification and slot-booking problems?
The Congress has accused the government of hiding behind technology to avoid buying wheat. Party leader Avinash Bhargava says the government kept changing the hurdle before the farmer. “First, the deadline was extended repeatedly. Then, when slots finally opened, farmers were told to get their wheat cultivation verified. Once they secured verification from the Patwari and Tehsildar, the authorities said the satellite survey showed a different crop. Now they are insisting on satellite-based re-verification. The tehsil is yours, the Patwari is yours. If you do not want to buy the farmer’s wheat, why are you creating new excuses every day? Sometimes you say Aadhaar is not linked to DBT, sometimes the bank account is invalid,” he said.
Chief Minister Dr Mohan Yadav has announced surprise inspections of procurement centres, saying his helicopter could land anywhere. But the farmer’s crisis is not waiting for a helicopter. It is sitting in his courtyard in the form of unsold wheat. It is parked in his tractor-trolley. It is written in the cancelled registration on his phone. It is visible in the mandi price that cuts hundreds of rupees from every quintal.
