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 ...

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...

MAIZE FARMERS ARE TAKEN FOR RIDE AGAIN ?? During 2015-16 season maize farm gate prices increased from Rs 1400 to 1800. Immediately poultry lobby came into picture and got an order issued from commerce minister to import 5 Lakh MT of maize. As the nonGM maize was not commercially viable to import hardly any quantity was imported and also there was no need of imports as sufficient quantities are available locally. In fact the lobby misguided GOI with less production figures. This order was purely used to create negative impact on market to reduce maize market rates and the lobby was successful. This season maize rates started around Rs 1500 and came down to Rs 1200 now. Its unfortunate there is no lobby to protect farmers interest, not even media support to highlight such issues. In fact egg prices almost doubled during this period and poultry industry can affer better rates to maize. GOI and even state governments are not serious about supporting the farmers even with MSP. Ho...