Invention to convention -An essential shift in Indian Agriculture As a country, we moved from food starving to food surplus nation in about 75years. Our food grain production increased from 50 Million MT in 1951 to 308 Million MT in 2020-21, which is a considerable achievement. With food grains such as paddy and wheat, shifting from sellers’ market to buyers’ market with bumper production in subsequent years, farmers are facing problems in selling the produce, despite Minimum support price (MSP) mechanisms. In fact it is impossible for any government directly purchasing from farmers at Minimum support price (MSP) and sustain the operations.   The intention of MSP is to act as bench mark price.   While working on MSP, other than cost of production, the other factors such crop planning, value addition possibilities, export potential, cost of buffer stock management etc., shall be considered. Just declaring MSP is not sufficient from Government, it has work on whole lot ...

FIRST IN PROMISE -LAST IN DELIVERY There is no halt to Govt failures in agrarian front and seems no one is interested in finding sustainable solutions, What is the use of increase in MSP for Agri produce if Govt is not having any implementation plans. The MSP VS Market prices for maize : 1700/1275, Black gram : 5600/4100, Green gram: 6975/4200, Redgram: 5675/4200, paddy: 1750/1650. e-NAM: Govt is making tall claims of its success but in reality it is just a paper tiger. The rural infrastructure statistical analysis looks fantastic. In functionality and responsiveness to failures the ground realities are different.  The situation moved  from bad to worst. Yesterday I was in a village where pump sets are not running due to transformers failures and today I moved to another village where there in no power for last three days. The indiscriminate imports of Agri produce is still an issue and pushed our sugar industry and farmers into red zone. The negative impact of de...

NAFED MSP PROCUREMENT – FACTS PUBLIC SHOULD KNOW NAFED MSP Procurement: NAFED, an independent public sector organization is entrusted with the responsibility of supporting various states through market intervention program of buying produce directly from farmers    with minimum support price (MSP) or MSP plush state declared addl bonus and store in the godowns.   NAFED engaged StarAgri as their warehouse partners and local procurement is entrusted to APMCs and other local channels through respective State Markfeds or NeML. Certification of crop extent, giving sale permits to farmers etc is handled by Markfeds in coordination with revenue and agriculture departments. Genuine farmers had night mare crossing these hurdles, where as traders and political personalities under the cover of farmer, could reach NAFED godowns directly bypassing the systems and controls. Farmers’ Situation: In case of poor farmers, they have to make produce   lots in market...

MINIMUM SUPPORT  PRICE (MSP) FOR AGRICULTURAL PRODUCE    - FEW INSIGHTS FOR TAKING APPROPRIATE DECISIONS Background: Then UPA Government under the leadership of Dr. Manmohan Singh appointed Dr. M S Swaminathan committee to look into the issues related to farmers and how to bring them out of agrarian crisis. The committee had gone into the details and recommended to revise MSP calculations considering cost of production plus 50% and protect farmer’s interests, so that farming will be a viable option with decent livelihoods. For some reasons, though the recommendations were presented and considered, could not be implemented before 2014 general elections. The PIL filed by few farmers’ organisations asking Supreme Court to direct GOI to implement the committee report was kept aside by stating that court cannot direct government to implement the policy decisions. The present NDA government under Sri Narendra Modi leadership recently took up the task of “ DOUBLIN...