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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Budget 2018 and Agriculture: MSP promise fails to cut ice with farmers -Parthasarathi Biswas

Budget 2018 and Agriculture: MSP promise fails to cut ice with farmers -Parthasarathi Biswas

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published Published on Feb 8, 2018   modified Modified on Feb 8, 2018
-The Indian Express

For farmers like Bhawane, it’s not the promised MSPs, but the prices for the chana and tur/arhar (pigeon-pea) they would be selling in the next fortnight or so that’s the real concern.

Latur:
Dhananjay Bhawane has little hope of the standing chana (chickpea) crop on eight out of his 10-acre field fetching anywhere near the government’s minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 4,400 per quintal, when it is due for harvest in about two weeks. “I will be lucky to realise even Rs 2,700-2,800. That rate, on a yield of 7-8 quintals per acre, may cover my input costs of around Rs 15,000 per acre. But it’s hardly any return for the work that I and my family (father, brother and their respective wives) have put in. Shouldn’t we also be paid something for our labour?,” asks this 37-year-old farmer from Tandulja village in Maharashtra’s Latur district.

Bhawane’s cynicism is a product of his bitter experience with soyabean. The 70 quintals of this crop that he harvested from his entire 10 acres and sold last November got him a rate of Rs 2,050 per quintal — way below the MSP of Rs 3,050. “Yes, a part of my produce suffered damage from excess rains. But should prices have fallen so much?,” he points out.

Not for nothing, this farmer isn’t impressed with the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s latest Budget announcement that the MSPs in the next kharif season — for crops to be harvested after September 2018 — would be fixed at 1.5 times the production costs. “Forget higher MSPs, are they implementing even the existing MSPs?,” notes Bhawane, who was among the many who thronged an election rally at Latur in April 2014 to hear the Bharatiya Janata Party’s then prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. “The same 50 per cent profit over costs was promised in that rally. What’s new in this budget?,” he adds.

For farmers like Bhawane, it’s not the promised MSPs, but the prices for the chana and tur/arhar (pigeon-pea) they would be selling in the next fortnight or so that’s the real concern. Chana and tur are currently quoting at Rs 3,750-3,800 and Rs 4,450-4,500 per quintal in the Latur APMC (agriculture produce market committee) mandi, against their respective MSPs of Rs 4,400 and Rs 5,450. This, even as market arrivals are still to pick up!

At Latur’s APMC, traders don’t expect prices to firm up much in the days ahead. Tur rates are now below MSP, despite the all-India area under this legume crop falling to 43.5 lakh hectares (lh), from 53.2 lh in 2016-17, with Maharashtra farmers alone reducing planting from 15.3 lh to 12.3 lh. Nitin Kalantri, CEO of Kalantry Food Products, a leading Latur-based dal milling and pulses trading firm, attributes this to the huge unsold tur stocks lying with the government from last year’s record procurement. Also, the trade is yet to fully recover from the effects of demonetisation. “Since the withdrawal of the old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, nobody’s really stocking up. That, by itself, has brought down demand by 10-15 per cent from the earlier normal levels,” he claims.

But more than arhar, it is the expected bloodbath in chana that is a cause for immediate concern. Farmers this time have sown 107.24 lh under the rabi pulse, compared to 99.04 lh in 2016-17, with Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Maharashtra reporting significant increases, from 32.52 lh to 35.90 lh and from 18.68 lh to 19.77 lh, respectively. Once this crop hits the market, a price crash may well be in the offing.

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The Indian Express, 8 February, 2018, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/budget-2018-and-agriculture-msp-promise-fails-to-cut-ice-with-farmers-5055434/


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