Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]Code Context
trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);
}
$message = 'The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.' $stackFrame = (int) 1 $trace = [ (int) 0 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ServerRequest.php', 'line' => (int) 2421, 'function' => 'deprecationWarning', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => 'The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead.' ] ], (int) 1 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php', 'line' => (int) 73, 'function' => 'offsetGet', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\ServerRequest', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => 'catslug' ] ], (int) 2 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Controller/Controller.php', 'line' => (int) 610, 'function' => 'printArticle', 'class' => 'App\Controller\ArtileDetailController', 'object' => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [] ], (int) 3 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php', 'line' => (int) 120, 'function' => 'invokeAction', 'class' => 'Cake\Controller\Controller', 'object' => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [] ], (int) 4 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php', 'line' => (int) 94, 'function' => '_invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {} ] ], (int) 5 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/BaseApplication.php', 'line' => (int) 235, 'function' => 'dispatch', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {} ] ], (int) 6 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php', 'line' => (int) 65, 'function' => '__invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\BaseApplication', 'object' => object(App\Application) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}, (int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {} ] ], (int) 7 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php', 'line' => (int) 162, 'function' => '__invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {} ] ], (int) 8 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php', 'line' => (int) 65, 'function' => '__invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware', 'object' => object(Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}, (int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {} ] ], (int) 9 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php', 'line' => (int) 88, 'function' => '__invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {} ] ], (int) 10 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php', 'line' => (int) 65, 'function' => '__invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware', 'object' => object(Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}, (int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {} ] ], (int) 11 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php', 'line' => (int) 96, 'function' => '__invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {} ] ], (int) 12 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php', 'line' => (int) 65, 'function' => '__invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware', 'object' => object(Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}, (int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {} ] ], (int) 13 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php', 'line' => (int) 51, 'function' => '__invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {} ] ], (int) 14 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Server.php', 'line' => (int) 98, 'function' => 'run', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\MiddlewareQueue) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {} ] ], (int) 15 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/webroot/index.php', 'line' => (int) 39, 'function' => 'run', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\Server', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\Server) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [] ] ] $frame = [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php', 'line' => (int) 73, 'function' => 'offsetGet', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\ServerRequest', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) { trustProxy => false [protected] params => [ [maximum depth reached] ] [protected] data => [[maximum depth reached]] [protected] query => [[maximum depth reached]] [protected] cookies => [ [maximum depth reached] ] [protected] _environment => [ [maximum depth reached] ] [protected] url => 'latest-news-updates/food-will-never-become-cheaper-as-expenses-rise-by-nidhi-nath-srinivas-4113/print' [protected] base => '' [protected] webroot => '/' [protected] here => '/latest-news-updates/food-will-never-become-cheaper-as-expenses-rise-by-nidhi-nath-srinivas-4113/print' [protected] trustedProxies => [[maximum depth reached]] [protected] _input => null [protected] _detectors => [ [maximum depth reached] ] [protected] _detectorCache => [ [maximum depth reached] ] [protected] stream => object(Zend\Diactoros\PhpInputStream) {} [protected] uri => object(Zend\Diactoros\Uri) {} [protected] session => object(Cake\Http\Session) {} [protected] attributes => [[maximum depth reached]] [protected] emulatedAttributes => [ [maximum depth reached] ] [protected] uploadedFiles => [[maximum depth reached]] [protected] protocol => null [protected] requestTarget => null [private] deprecatedProperties => [ [maximum depth reached] ] }, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => 'catslug' ] ]deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311 Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421 App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 73 Cake\Controller\Controller::invokeAction() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 610 Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120 Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94 Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51 Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]Code Context
trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);
}
$message = 'The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.' $stackFrame = (int) 1 $trace = [ (int) 0 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ServerRequest.php', 'line' => (int) 2421, 'function' => 'deprecationWarning', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => 'The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead.' ] ], (int) 1 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php', 'line' => (int) 74, 'function' => 'offsetGet', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\ServerRequest', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => 'artileslug' ] ], (int) 2 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Controller/Controller.php', 'line' => (int) 610, 'function' => 'printArticle', 'class' => 'App\Controller\ArtileDetailController', 'object' => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [] ], (int) 3 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php', 'line' => (int) 120, 'function' => 'invokeAction', 'class' => 'Cake\Controller\Controller', 'object' => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [] ], (int) 4 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php', 'line' => (int) 94, 'function' => '_invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {} ] ], (int) 5 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/BaseApplication.php', 'line' => (int) 235, 'function' => 'dispatch', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {} ] ], (int) 6 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php', 'line' => (int) 65, 'function' => '__invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\BaseApplication', 'object' => object(App\Application) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}, (int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {} ] ], (int) 7 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php', 'line' => (int) 162, 'function' => '__invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {} ] ], (int) 8 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php', 'line' => (int) 65, 'function' => '__invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware', 'object' => object(Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}, (int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {} ] ], (int) 9 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php', 'line' => (int) 88, 'function' => '__invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {} ] ], (int) 10 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php', 'line' => (int) 65, 'function' => '__invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware', 'object' => object(Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}, (int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {} ] ], (int) 11 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php', 'line' => (int) 96, 'function' => '__invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {} ] ], (int) 12 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php', 'line' => (int) 65, 'function' => '__invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware', 'object' => object(Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}, (int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {} ] ], (int) 13 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php', 'line' => (int) 51, 'function' => '__invoke', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {} ] ], (int) 14 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Server.php', 'line' => (int) 98, 'function' => 'run', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\MiddlewareQueue) {}, (int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {}, (int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {} ] ], (int) 15 => [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/webroot/index.php', 'line' => (int) 39, 'function' => 'run', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\Server', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\Server) {}, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [] ] ] $frame = [ 'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php', 'line' => (int) 74, 'function' => 'offsetGet', 'class' => 'Cake\Http\ServerRequest', 'object' => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) { trustProxy => false [protected] params => [ [maximum depth reached] ] [protected] data => [[maximum depth reached]] [protected] query => [[maximum depth reached]] [protected] cookies => [ [maximum depth reached] ] [protected] _environment => [ [maximum depth reached] ] [protected] url => 'latest-news-updates/food-will-never-become-cheaper-as-expenses-rise-by-nidhi-nath-srinivas-4113/print' [protected] base => '' [protected] webroot => '/' [protected] here => '/latest-news-updates/food-will-never-become-cheaper-as-expenses-rise-by-nidhi-nath-srinivas-4113/print' [protected] trustedProxies => [[maximum depth reached]] [protected] _input => null [protected] _detectors => [ [maximum depth reached] ] [protected] _detectorCache => [ [maximum depth reached] ] [protected] stream => object(Zend\Diactoros\PhpInputStream) {} [protected] uri => object(Zend\Diactoros\Uri) {} [protected] session => object(Cake\Http\Session) {} [protected] attributes => [[maximum depth reached]] [protected] emulatedAttributes => [ [maximum depth reached] ] [protected] uploadedFiles => [[maximum depth reached]] [protected] protocol => null [protected] requestTarget => null [private] deprecatedProperties => [ [maximum depth reached] ] }, 'type' => '->', 'args' => [ (int) 0 => 'artileslug' ] ]deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311 Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421 App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 74 Cake\Controller\Controller::invokeAction() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 610 Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120 Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94 Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51 Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]Code Contextif (Configure::read('debug')) {
trigger_error($message, E_USER_WARNING);
} else {
$response = object(Cake\Http\Response) { 'status' => (int) 200, 'contentType' => 'text/html', 'headers' => [ 'Content-Type' => [ [maximum depth reached] ] ], 'file' => null, 'fileRange' => [], 'cookies' => object(Cake\Http\Cookie\CookieCollection) {}, 'cacheDirectives' => [], 'body' => '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <link rel="canonical" href="https://im4change.in/<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr68033ee5e8941-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr68033ee5e8941-trace').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none');"><b>Notice</b> (8)</a>: Undefined variable: urlPrefix [<b>APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp</b>, line <b>8</b>]<div id="cakeErr68033ee5e8941-trace" class="cake-stack-trace" style="display: none;"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr68033ee5e8941-code').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr68033ee5e8941-code').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Code</a> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr68033ee5e8941-context').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr68033ee5e8941-context').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr68033ee5e8941-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"></span><span style="color: #007700"><</span><span style="color: #0000BB">head</span><span style="color: #007700">> </span></span></code> <span class="code-highlight"><code><span style="color: #000000"> <link rel="canonical" href="<span style="color: #0000BB"><?php </span><span style="color: #007700">echo </span><span style="color: #0000BB">Configure</span><span style="color: #007700">::</span><span style="color: #0000BB">read</span><span style="color: #007700">(</span><span style="color: #DD0000">'SITE_URL'</span><span style="color: #007700">); </span><span style="color: #0000BB">?><?php </span><span style="color: #007700">echo </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$urlPrefix</span><span style="color: #007700">;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?><?php </span><span style="color: #007700">echo </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-></span><span style="color: #0000BB">category</span><span style="color: #007700">-></span><span style="color: #0000BB">slug</span><span style="color: #007700">; </span><span style="color: #0000BB">?></span>/<span style="color: #0000BB"><?php </span><span style="color: #007700">echo </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-></span><span style="color: #0000BB">seo_url</span><span style="color: #007700">; </span><span style="color: #0000BB">?></span>.html"/> </span></code></span> <code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"> </span><span style="color: #007700"><</span><span style="color: #0000BB">meta http</span><span style="color: #007700">-</span><span style="color: #0000BB">equiv</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"Content-Type" </span><span style="color: #0000BB">content</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"text/html; charset=utf-8"</span><span style="color: #007700">/> </span></span></code></pre><pre id="cakeErr68033ee5e8941-context" class="cake-context" style="display: none;">$viewFile = '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp' $dataForView = [ 'article_current' => object(App\Model\Entity\Article) { 'id' => (int) 4023, 'title' => 'Food will never become cheaper as expenses rise by Nidhi Nath Srinivas', 'subheading' => '', 'description' => '<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3"><br /> </font> <div align="justify"> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier even before they reach the market and face the pulls and tugs of rising local demand and exports.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The farmer&rsquo;s single biggest cost now is labour. Farm labour wages have doubled in the last year across states and crops. The worst affected are fruits and vegetables because they need careful tending. Onion farmers in Jalgaon last year paid Rs 50 daily for a woman to plant seeds, do the weeding, and later harvest the bulbs. This year, she wants Rs 100 per day. Men demand Rs 150. Cheap labour that gave Indian horticulture its competitive edge is blunting rapidly.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Field crops are faring no better. Maharashtra sugarcane farmers have agreed with labour unions to pay 25% more for harvesting the crop. Picking cotton is India&rsquo;s largest on-farm employment opportunity. This year cotton farmers are paying Rs 4.50 for picking each kilo, again double last year. Cost of ploughing, sowing, spraying and weeding each acre is extra. The total labour cost in the current season has touched Rs 10 per kilo.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">In parts of Punjab and Haryana, you can&rsquo;t get workers at any price, leaving this summer&rsquo;s paddy standing forlorn in the fields. What has changed? The farm worker&rsquo;s negotiating power. For the first time. With free monthly ration and government mazdoori available for Rs 100 a day, landless labourers needn&rsquo;t beg neighbours for work. Work is chasing them. It&rsquo;s a heady feeling. And disconcerting for the rest of the countryside.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">While labour costs per hectare are zooming, yields per hectare are stagnant. That&rsquo;s like running a factory at 30-40% capacity. Obviously, the per unit cost swells. Logically, rich farmers growing cash crops should be keenest to increase output. Not so.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">UP cane farmers, Punjab grain farmers, Andhra paddy farmers haven&rsquo;t used high-tech varieties in years. Only cotton farmers have shown nous in adopting BT technology to double output in six years. Without dramatically boosting volumes, farmers can&rsquo;t even consider reducing product prices. No FMCG company would either.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">With stagnant yields, bumper harvests only occur when more acres are diverted to a crop, and aided by good weather. Since cultivable land has maxed out, this bounty is at the cost of some other crop. Farmville is nothing to our farmland passing-the-parcel. Government&rsquo;s MSP acts like the music played randomly to declare a winner. Pulses won this year. Wheat MSP is a deliberate disincentive because the 2% increase doesn&rsquo;t cover costs.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">As a result, inflation merely hops from pulses to cereals to sugar to oils to vegetables. It never goes away. Yield fatigue implies returns are still too volatile to incentivise technology upgradation. Food prices have to spiral and stay there if India wishes to feed itself.</font><br /> <br /> </div>', 'credit_writer' => 'The Economic Times, 1 November, 2010, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/nidhi-nath-srinivas/Food-will-never-become-cheaper-as-expenses-rise/articleshow/6849197.cms', 'article_img' => '', 'article_img_thumb' => '', 'status' => (int) 1, 'show_on_home' => (int) 1, 'lang' => 'EN', 'category_id' => (int) 16, 'tag_keyword' => '', 'seo_url' => 'food-will-never-become-cheaper-as-expenses-rise-by-nidhi-nath-srinivas-4113', 'meta_title' => null, 'meta_keywords' => null, 'meta_description' => null, 'noindex' => (int) 0, 'publish_date' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {}, 'most_visit_section_id' => null, 'article_big_img' => null, 'liveid' => (int) 4113, 'created' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {}, 'modified' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {}, 'edate' => '', 'tags' => [ [maximum depth reached] ], 'category' => object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {}, '[new]' => false, '[accessible]' => [ [maximum depth reached] ], '[dirty]' => [[maximum depth reached]], '[original]' => [[maximum depth reached]], '[virtual]' => [[maximum depth reached]], '[hasErrors]' => false, '[errors]' => [[maximum depth reached]], '[invalid]' => [[maximum depth reached]], '[repository]' => 'Articles' }, 'articleid' => (int) 4023, 'metaTitle' => 'LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Food will never become cheaper as expenses rise by Nidhi Nath Srinivas', 'metaKeywords' => 'Inflation', 'metaDesc' => ' Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier...', 'disp' => '<font ><br /></font><div align="justify"><font >Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier even before they reach the market and face the pulls and tugs of rising local demand and exports.</font><br /><br /><font >The farmer&rsquo;s single biggest cost now is labour. Farm labour wages have doubled in the last year across states and crops. The worst affected are fruits and vegetables because they need careful tending. Onion farmers in Jalgaon last year paid Rs 50 daily for a woman to plant seeds, do the weeding, and later harvest the bulbs. This year, she wants Rs 100 per day. Men demand Rs 150. Cheap labour that gave Indian horticulture its competitive edge is blunting rapidly.</font><br /><br /><font >Field crops are faring no better. Maharashtra sugarcane farmers have agreed with labour unions to pay 25% more for harvesting the crop. Picking cotton is India&rsquo;s largest on-farm employment opportunity. This year cotton farmers are paying Rs 4.50 for picking each kilo, again double last year. Cost of ploughing, sowing, spraying and weeding each acre is extra. The total labour cost in the current season has touched Rs 10 per kilo.</font><br /><br /><font >In parts of Punjab and Haryana, you can&rsquo;t get workers at any price, leaving this summer&rsquo;s paddy standing forlorn in the fields. What has changed? The farm worker&rsquo;s negotiating power. For the first time. With free monthly ration and government mazdoori available for Rs 100 a day, landless labourers needn&rsquo;t beg neighbours for work. Work is chasing them. It&rsquo;s a heady feeling. And disconcerting for the rest of the countryside.</font><br /><br /><font >While labour costs per hectare are zooming, yields per hectare are stagnant. That&rsquo;s like running a factory at 30-40% capacity. Obviously, the per unit cost swells. Logically, rich farmers growing cash crops should be keenest to increase output. Not so.</font><br /><br /><font >UP cane farmers, Punjab grain farmers, Andhra paddy farmers haven&rsquo;t used high-tech varieties in years. Only cotton farmers have shown nous in adopting BT technology to double output in six years. Without dramatically boosting volumes, farmers can&rsquo;t even consider reducing product prices. No FMCG company would either.</font><br /><br /><font >With stagnant yields, bumper harvests only occur when more acres are diverted to a crop, and aided by good weather. Since cultivable land has maxed out, this bounty is at the cost of some other crop. Farmville is nothing to our farmland passing-the-parcel. Government&rsquo;s MSP acts like the music played randomly to declare a winner. Pulses won this year. Wheat MSP is a deliberate disincentive because the 2% increase doesn&rsquo;t cover costs.</font><br /><br /><font >As a result, inflation merely hops from pulses to cereals to sugar to oils to vegetables. It never goes away. Yield fatigue implies returns are still too volatile to incentivise technology upgradation. Food prices have to spiral and stay there if India wishes to feed itself.</font><br /><br /></div>', 'lang' => 'English', 'SITE_URL' => 'https://im4change.in/', 'site_title' => 'im4change', 'adminprix' => 'admin' ] $article_current = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) { 'id' => (int) 4023, 'title' => 'Food will never become cheaper as expenses rise by Nidhi Nath Srinivas', 'subheading' => '', 'description' => '<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3"><br /> </font> <div align="justify"> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier even before they reach the market and face the pulls and tugs of rising local demand and exports.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The farmer&rsquo;s single biggest cost now is labour. Farm labour wages have doubled in the last year across states and crops. The worst affected are fruits and vegetables because they need careful tending. Onion farmers in Jalgaon last year paid Rs 50 daily for a woman to plant seeds, do the weeding, and later harvest the bulbs. This year, she wants Rs 100 per day. Men demand Rs 150. Cheap labour that gave Indian horticulture its competitive edge is blunting rapidly.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Field crops are faring no better. Maharashtra sugarcane farmers have agreed with labour unions to pay 25% more for harvesting the crop. Picking cotton is India&rsquo;s largest on-farm employment opportunity. This year cotton farmers are paying Rs 4.50 for picking each kilo, again double last year. Cost of ploughing, sowing, spraying and weeding each acre is extra. The total labour cost in the current season has touched Rs 10 per kilo.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">In parts of Punjab and Haryana, you can&rsquo;t get workers at any price, leaving this summer&rsquo;s paddy standing forlorn in the fields. What has changed? The farm worker&rsquo;s negotiating power. For the first time. With free monthly ration and government mazdoori available for Rs 100 a day, landless labourers needn&rsquo;t beg neighbours for work. Work is chasing them. It&rsquo;s a heady feeling. And disconcerting for the rest of the countryside.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">While labour costs per hectare are zooming, yields per hectare are stagnant. That&rsquo;s like running a factory at 30-40% capacity. Obviously, the per unit cost swells. Logically, rich farmers growing cash crops should be keenest to increase output. Not so.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">UP cane farmers, Punjab grain farmers, Andhra paddy farmers haven&rsquo;t used high-tech varieties in years. Only cotton farmers have shown nous in adopting BT technology to double output in six years. Without dramatically boosting volumes, farmers can&rsquo;t even consider reducing product prices. No FMCG company would either.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">With stagnant yields, bumper harvests only occur when more acres are diverted to a crop, and aided by good weather. Since cultivable land has maxed out, this bounty is at the cost of some other crop. Farmville is nothing to our farmland passing-the-parcel. Government&rsquo;s MSP acts like the music played randomly to declare a winner. Pulses won this year. Wheat MSP is a deliberate disincentive because the 2% increase doesn&rsquo;t cover costs.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">As a result, inflation merely hops from pulses to cereals to sugar to oils to vegetables. It never goes away. Yield fatigue implies returns are still too volatile to incentivise technology upgradation. 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Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier...' $disp = '<font ><br /></font><div align="justify"><font >Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier even before they reach the market and face the pulls and tugs of rising local demand and exports.</font><br /><br /><font >The farmer&rsquo;s single biggest cost now is labour. Farm labour wages have doubled in the last year across states and crops. The worst affected are fruits and vegetables because they need careful tending. Onion farmers in Jalgaon last year paid Rs 50 daily for a woman to plant seeds, do the weeding, and later harvest the bulbs. This year, she wants Rs 100 per day. Men demand Rs 150. Cheap labour that gave Indian horticulture its competitive edge is blunting rapidly.</font><br /><br /><font >Field crops are faring no better. Maharashtra sugarcane farmers have agreed with labour unions to pay 25% more for harvesting the crop. Picking cotton is India&rsquo;s largest on-farm employment opportunity. This year cotton farmers are paying Rs 4.50 for picking each kilo, again double last year. Cost of ploughing, sowing, spraying and weeding each acre is extra. The total labour cost in the current season has touched Rs 10 per kilo.</font><br /><br /><font >In parts of Punjab and Haryana, you can&rsquo;t get workers at any price, leaving this summer&rsquo;s paddy standing forlorn in the fields. What has changed? The farm worker&rsquo;s negotiating power. For the first time. With free monthly ration and government mazdoori available for Rs 100 a day, landless labourers needn&rsquo;t beg neighbours for work. Work is chasing them. It&rsquo;s a heady feeling. And disconcerting for the rest of the countryside.</font><br /><br /><font >While labour costs per hectare are zooming, yields per hectare are stagnant. That&rsquo;s like running a factory at 30-40% capacity. Obviously, the per unit cost swells. Logically, rich farmers growing cash crops should be keenest to increase output. Not so.</font><br /><br /><font >UP cane farmers, Punjab grain farmers, Andhra paddy farmers haven&rsquo;t used high-tech varieties in years. Only cotton farmers have shown nous in adopting BT technology to double output in six years. Without dramatically boosting volumes, farmers can&rsquo;t even consider reducing product prices. No FMCG company would either.</font><br /><br /><font >With stagnant yields, bumper harvests only occur when more acres are diverted to a crop, and aided by good weather. Since cultivable land has maxed out, this bounty is at the cost of some other crop. Farmville is nothing to our farmland passing-the-parcel. Government&rsquo;s MSP acts like the music played randomly to declare a winner. Pulses won this year. Wheat MSP is a deliberate disincentive because the 2% increase doesn&rsquo;t cover costs.</font><br /><br /><font >As a result, inflation merely hops from pulses to cereals to sugar to oils to vegetables. It never goes away. Yield fatigue implies returns are still too volatile to incentivise technology upgradation. Food prices have to spiral and stay there if India wishes to feed itself.</font><br /><br /></div>' $lang = 'English' $SITE_URL = 'https://im4change.in/' $site_title = 'im4change' $adminprix = 'admin'</pre><pre class="stack-trace">include - APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8 Cake\View\View::_evaluate() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1413 Cake\View\View::_render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1374 Cake\View\View::renderLayout() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 927 Cake\View\View::render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 885 Cake\Controller\Controller::render() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 791 Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 126 Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94 Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51</pre></div></pre>latest-news-updates/food-will-never-become-cheaper-as-expenses-rise-by-nidhi-nath-srinivas-4113.html"/> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/> <link href="https://im4change.in/css/control.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all"/> <title>LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Food will never become cheaper as expenses rise by Nidhi Nath Srinivas | Im4change.org</title> <meta name="description" content=" Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier..."/> <script src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-1.10.2.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-migrate.min.js"></script> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function () { var img = $("img")[0]; // Get my img elem var pic_real_width, pic_real_height; $("<img/>") // Make in memory copy of image to avoid css issues .attr("src", $(img).attr("src")) .load(function () { pic_real_width = this.width; // Note: $(this).width() will not pic_real_height = this.height; // work for in memory images. }); }); </script> <style type="text/css"> @media screen { div.divFooter { display: block; } } @media print { .printbutton { display: none !important; } } </style> </head> <body> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="98%" align="center"> <tr> <td class="top_bg"> <div class="divFooter"> <img src="https://im4change.in/images/logo1.jpg" height="59" border="0" alt="Resource centre on India's rural distress" style="padding-top:14px;"/> </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td id="topspace"> </td> </tr> <tr id="topspace"> <td> </td> </tr> <tr> <td height="50" style="border-bottom:1px solid #000; padding-top:10px;" class="printbutton"> <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page " onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%"> <h1 class="news_headlines" style="font-style:normal"> <strong>Food will never become cheaper as expenses rise by Nidhi Nath Srinivas</strong></h1> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" style="font-family:Arial, 'Segoe Script', 'Segoe UI', sans-serif, serif"><font size="3"> <font ><br /></font><div align="justify"><font >Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier even before they reach the market and face the pulls and tugs of rising local demand and exports.</font><br /><br /><font >The farmer’s single biggest cost now is labour. Farm labour wages have doubled in the last year across states and crops. The worst affected are fruits and vegetables because they need careful tending. Onion farmers in Jalgaon last year paid Rs 50 daily for a woman to plant seeds, do the weeding, and later harvest the bulbs. This year, she wants Rs 100 per day. Men demand Rs 150. Cheap labour that gave Indian horticulture its competitive edge is blunting rapidly.</font><br /><br /><font >Field crops are faring no better. Maharashtra sugarcane farmers have agreed with labour unions to pay 25% more for harvesting the crop. Picking cotton is India’s largest on-farm employment opportunity. This year cotton farmers are paying Rs 4.50 for picking each kilo, again double last year. Cost of ploughing, sowing, spraying and weeding each acre is extra. The total labour cost in the current season has touched Rs 10 per kilo.</font><br /><br /><font >In parts of Punjab and Haryana, you can’t get workers at any price, leaving this summer’s paddy standing forlorn in the fields. What has changed? The farm worker’s negotiating power. For the first time. With free monthly ration and government mazdoori available for Rs 100 a day, landless labourers needn’t beg neighbours for work. Work is chasing them. It’s a heady feeling. And disconcerting for the rest of the countryside.</font><br /><br /><font >While labour costs per hectare are zooming, yields per hectare are stagnant. That’s like running a factory at 30-40% capacity. Obviously, the per unit cost swells. Logically, rich farmers growing cash crops should be keenest to increase output. Not so.</font><br /><br /><font >UP cane farmers, Punjab grain farmers, Andhra paddy farmers haven’t used high-tech varieties in years. Only cotton farmers have shown nous in adopting BT technology to double output in six years. Without dramatically boosting volumes, farmers can’t even consider reducing product prices. No FMCG company would either.</font><br /><br /><font >With stagnant yields, bumper harvests only occur when more acres are diverted to a crop, and aided by good weather. Since cultivable land has maxed out, this bounty is at the cost of some other crop. Farmville is nothing to our farmland passing-the-parcel. Government’s MSP acts like the music played randomly to declare a winner. Pulses won this year. Wheat MSP is a deliberate disincentive because the 2% increase doesn’t cover costs.</font><br /><br /><font >As a result, inflation merely hops from pulses to cereals to sugar to oils to vegetables. It never goes away. Yield fatigue implies returns are still too volatile to incentivise technology upgradation. Food prices have to spiral and stay there if India wishes to feed itself.</font><br /><br /></div> </font> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> </td> </tr> <tr> <td height="50" style="border-top:1px solid #000; border-bottom:1px solid #000;padding-top:10px;"> <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page " onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form> </td> </tr> </table></body> </html>' } $maxBufferLength = (int) 8192 $file = '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php' $line = (int) 853 $message = 'Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853'Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emit() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48 Cake\Http\Server::emit() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 141 [main] - ROOT/webroot/index.php, line 39
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$response = object(Cake\Http\Response) { 'status' => (int) 200, 'contentType' => 'text/html', 'headers' => [ 'Content-Type' => [ [maximum depth reached] ] ], 'file' => null, 'fileRange' => [], 'cookies' => object(Cake\Http\Cookie\CookieCollection) {}, 'cacheDirectives' => [], 'body' => '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <link rel="canonical" href="https://im4change.in/<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr68033ee5e8941-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr68033ee5e8941-trace').style.display == 'none' ? 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'' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr68033ee5e8941-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"></span><span style="color: #007700"><</span><span style="color: #0000BB">head</span><span style="color: #007700">> </span></span></code> <span class="code-highlight"><code><span style="color: #000000"> <link rel="canonical" href="<span style="color: #0000BB"><?php </span><span style="color: #007700">echo </span><span style="color: #0000BB">Configure</span><span style="color: #007700">::</span><span style="color: #0000BB">read</span><span style="color: #007700">(</span><span style="color: #DD0000">'SITE_URL'</span><span style="color: #007700">); </span><span style="color: #0000BB">?><?php </span><span style="color: #007700">echo </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$urlPrefix</span><span style="color: #007700">;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?><?php </span><span style="color: #007700">echo </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-></span><span style="color: #0000BB">category</span><span style="color: #007700">-></span><span style="color: #0000BB">slug</span><span style="color: #007700">; </span><span style="color: #0000BB">?></span>/<span style="color: #0000BB"><?php </span><span style="color: #007700">echo </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-></span><span style="color: #0000BB">seo_url</span><span style="color: #007700">; </span><span style="color: #0000BB">?></span>.html"/> </span></code></span> <code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"> </span><span style="color: #007700"><</span><span style="color: #0000BB">meta http</span><span style="color: #007700">-</span><span style="color: #0000BB">equiv</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"Content-Type" </span><span style="color: #0000BB">content</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"text/html; charset=utf-8"</span><span style="color: #007700">/> </span></span></code></pre><pre id="cakeErr68033ee5e8941-context" class="cake-context" style="display: none;">$viewFile = '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp' $dataForView = [ 'article_current' => object(App\Model\Entity\Article) { 'id' => (int) 4023, 'title' => 'Food will never become cheaper as expenses rise by Nidhi Nath Srinivas', 'subheading' => '', 'description' => '<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3"><br /> </font> <div align="justify"> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier even before they reach the market and face the pulls and tugs of rising local demand and exports.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The farmer&rsquo;s single biggest cost now is labour. Farm labour wages have doubled in the last year across states and crops. The worst affected are fruits and vegetables because they need careful tending. Onion farmers in Jalgaon last year paid Rs 50 daily for a woman to plant seeds, do the weeding, and later harvest the bulbs. This year, she wants Rs 100 per day. Men demand Rs 150. Cheap labour that gave Indian horticulture its competitive edge is blunting rapidly.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Field crops are faring no better. Maharashtra sugarcane farmers have agreed with labour unions to pay 25% more for harvesting the crop. Picking cotton is India&rsquo;s largest on-farm employment opportunity. This year cotton farmers are paying Rs 4.50 for picking each kilo, again double last year. Cost of ploughing, sowing, spraying and weeding each acre is extra. The total labour cost in the current season has touched Rs 10 per kilo.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">In parts of Punjab and Haryana, you can&rsquo;t get workers at any price, leaving this summer&rsquo;s paddy standing forlorn in the fields. What has changed? The farm worker&rsquo;s negotiating power. For the first time. With free monthly ration and government mazdoori available for Rs 100 a day, landless labourers needn&rsquo;t beg neighbours for work. Work is chasing them. It&rsquo;s a heady feeling. And disconcerting for the rest of the countryside.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">While labour costs per hectare are zooming, yields per hectare are stagnant. That&rsquo;s like running a factory at 30-40% capacity. Obviously, the per unit cost swells. Logically, rich farmers growing cash crops should be keenest to increase output. Not so.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">UP cane farmers, Punjab grain farmers, Andhra paddy farmers haven&rsquo;t used high-tech varieties in years. Only cotton farmers have shown nous in adopting BT technology to double output in six years. Without dramatically boosting volumes, farmers can&rsquo;t even consider reducing product prices. No FMCG company would either.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">With stagnant yields, bumper harvests only occur when more acres are diverted to a crop, and aided by good weather. Since cultivable land has maxed out, this bounty is at the cost of some other crop. Farmville is nothing to our farmland passing-the-parcel. Government&rsquo;s MSP acts like the music played randomly to declare a winner. Pulses won this year. Wheat MSP is a deliberate disincentive because the 2% increase doesn&rsquo;t cover costs.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">As a result, inflation merely hops from pulses to cereals to sugar to oils to vegetables. It never goes away. Yield fatigue implies returns are still too volatile to incentivise technology upgradation. Food prices have to spiral and stay there if India wishes to feed itself.</font><br /> <br /> </div>', 'credit_writer' => 'The Economic Times, 1 November, 2010, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/nidhi-nath-srinivas/Food-will-never-become-cheaper-as-expenses-rise/articleshow/6849197.cms', 'article_img' => '', 'article_img_thumb' => '', 'status' => (int) 1, 'show_on_home' => (int) 1, 'lang' => 'EN', 'category_id' => (int) 16, 'tag_keyword' => '', 'seo_url' => 'food-will-never-become-cheaper-as-expenses-rise-by-nidhi-nath-srinivas-4113', 'meta_title' => null, 'meta_keywords' => null, 'meta_description' => null, 'noindex' => (int) 0, 'publish_date' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {}, 'most_visit_section_id' => null, 'article_big_img' => null, 'liveid' => (int) 4113, 'created' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {}, 'modified' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {}, 'edate' => '', 'tags' => [ [maximum depth reached] ], 'category' => object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {}, '[new]' => false, '[accessible]' => [ [maximum depth reached] ], '[dirty]' => [[maximum depth reached]], '[original]' => [[maximum depth reached]], '[virtual]' => [[maximum depth reached]], '[hasErrors]' => false, '[errors]' => [[maximum depth reached]], '[invalid]' => [[maximum depth reached]], '[repository]' => 'Articles' }, 'articleid' => (int) 4023, 'metaTitle' => 'LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Food will never become cheaper as expenses rise by Nidhi Nath Srinivas', 'metaKeywords' => 'Inflation', 'metaDesc' => ' Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier...', 'disp' => '<font ><br /></font><div align="justify"><font >Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier even before they reach the market and face the pulls and tugs of rising local demand and exports.</font><br /><br /><font >The farmer&rsquo;s single biggest cost now is labour. Farm labour wages have doubled in the last year across states and crops. The worst affected are fruits and vegetables because they need careful tending. Onion farmers in Jalgaon last year paid Rs 50 daily for a woman to plant seeds, do the weeding, and later harvest the bulbs. This year, she wants Rs 100 per day. Men demand Rs 150. Cheap labour that gave Indian horticulture its competitive edge is blunting rapidly.</font><br /><br /><font >Field crops are faring no better. Maharashtra sugarcane farmers have agreed with labour unions to pay 25% more for harvesting the crop. Picking cotton is India&rsquo;s largest on-farm employment opportunity. This year cotton farmers are paying Rs 4.50 for picking each kilo, again double last year. Cost of ploughing, sowing, spraying and weeding each acre is extra. The total labour cost in the current season has touched Rs 10 per kilo.</font><br /><br /><font >In parts of Punjab and Haryana, you can&rsquo;t get workers at any price, leaving this summer&rsquo;s paddy standing forlorn in the fields. What has changed? The farm worker&rsquo;s negotiating power. For the first time. With free monthly ration and government mazdoori available for Rs 100 a day, landless labourers needn&rsquo;t beg neighbours for work. Work is chasing them. It&rsquo;s a heady feeling. And disconcerting for the rest of the countryside.</font><br /><br /><font >While labour costs per hectare are zooming, yields per hectare are stagnant. That&rsquo;s like running a factory at 30-40% capacity. Obviously, the per unit cost swells. Logically, rich farmers growing cash crops should be keenest to increase output. Not so.</font><br /><br /><font >UP cane farmers, Punjab grain farmers, Andhra paddy farmers haven&rsquo;t used high-tech varieties in years. Only cotton farmers have shown nous in adopting BT technology to double output in six years. Without dramatically boosting volumes, farmers can&rsquo;t even consider reducing product prices. No FMCG company would either.</font><br /><br /><font >With stagnant yields, bumper harvests only occur when more acres are diverted to a crop, and aided by good weather. Since cultivable land has maxed out, this bounty is at the cost of some other crop. Farmville is nothing to our farmland passing-the-parcel. Government&rsquo;s MSP acts like the music played randomly to declare a winner. Pulses won this year. Wheat MSP is a deliberate disincentive because the 2% increase doesn&rsquo;t cover costs.</font><br /><br /><font >As a result, inflation merely hops from pulses to cereals to sugar to oils to vegetables. It never goes away. Yield fatigue implies returns are still too volatile to incentivise technology upgradation. Food prices have to spiral and stay there if India wishes to feed itself.</font><br /><br /></div>', 'lang' => 'English', 'SITE_URL' => 'https://im4change.in/', 'site_title' => 'im4change', 'adminprix' => 'admin' ] $article_current = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) { 'id' => (int) 4023, 'title' => 'Food will never become cheaper as expenses rise by Nidhi Nath Srinivas', 'subheading' => '', 'description' => '<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3"><br /> </font> <div align="justify"> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier even before they reach the market and face the pulls and tugs of rising local demand and exports.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The farmer&rsquo;s single biggest cost now is labour. 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Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier...' $disp = '<font ><br /></font><div align="justify"><font >Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier even before they reach the market and face the pulls and tugs of rising local demand and exports.</font><br /><br /><font >The farmer&rsquo;s single biggest cost now is labour. Farm labour wages have doubled in the last year across states and crops. The worst affected are fruits and vegetables because they need careful tending. Onion farmers in Jalgaon last year paid Rs 50 daily for a woman to plant seeds, do the weeding, and later harvest the bulbs. This year, she wants Rs 100 per day. Men demand Rs 150. Cheap labour that gave Indian horticulture its competitive edge is blunting rapidly.</font><br /><br /><font >Field crops are faring no better. Maharashtra sugarcane farmers have agreed with labour unions to pay 25% more for harvesting the crop. Picking cotton is India&rsquo;s largest on-farm employment opportunity. This year cotton farmers are paying Rs 4.50 for picking each kilo, again double last year. Cost of ploughing, sowing, spraying and weeding each acre is extra. The total labour cost in the current season has touched Rs 10 per kilo.</font><br /><br /><font >In parts of Punjab and Haryana, you can&rsquo;t get workers at any price, leaving this summer&rsquo;s paddy standing forlorn in the fields. What has changed? The farm worker&rsquo;s negotiating power. For the first time. With free monthly ration and government mazdoori available for Rs 100 a day, landless labourers needn&rsquo;t beg neighbours for work. Work is chasing them. It&rsquo;s a heady feeling. And disconcerting for the rest of the countryside.</font><br /><br /><font >While labour costs per hectare are zooming, yields per hectare are stagnant. That&rsquo;s like running a factory at 30-40% capacity. Obviously, the per unit cost swells. Logically, rich farmers growing cash crops should be keenest to increase output. Not so.</font><br /><br /><font >UP cane farmers, Punjab grain farmers, Andhra paddy farmers haven&rsquo;t used high-tech varieties in years. Only cotton farmers have shown nous in adopting BT technology to double output in six years. Without dramatically boosting volumes, farmers can&rsquo;t even consider reducing product prices. No FMCG company would either.</font><br /><br /><font >With stagnant yields, bumper harvests only occur when more acres are diverted to a crop, and aided by good weather. Since cultivable land has maxed out, this bounty is at the cost of some other crop. Farmville is nothing to our farmland passing-the-parcel. Government&rsquo;s MSP acts like the music played randomly to declare a winner. Pulses won this year. Wheat MSP is a deliberate disincentive because the 2% increase doesn&rsquo;t cover costs.</font><br /><br /><font >As a result, inflation merely hops from pulses to cereals to sugar to oils to vegetables. It never goes away. Yield fatigue implies returns are still too volatile to incentivise technology upgradation. Food prices have to spiral and stay there if India wishes to feed itself.</font><br /><br /></div>' $lang = 'English' $SITE_URL = 'https://im4change.in/' $site_title = 'im4change' $adminprix = 'admin'</pre><pre class="stack-trace">include - APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8 Cake\View\View::_evaluate() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1413 Cake\View\View::_render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1374 Cake\View\View::renderLayout() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 927 Cake\View\View::render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 885 Cake\Controller\Controller::render() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 791 Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 126 Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94 Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51</pre></div></pre>latest-news-updates/food-will-never-become-cheaper-as-expenses-rise-by-nidhi-nath-srinivas-4113.html"/> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/> <link href="https://im4change.in/css/control.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all"/> <title>LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Food will never become cheaper as expenses rise by Nidhi Nath Srinivas | Im4change.org</title> <meta name="description" content=" Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier..."/> <script src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-1.10.2.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-migrate.min.js"></script> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function () { var img = $("img")[0]; // Get my img elem var pic_real_width, pic_real_height; $("<img/>") // Make in memory copy of image to avoid css issues .attr("src", $(img).attr("src")) .load(function () { pic_real_width = this.width; // Note: $(this).width() will not pic_real_height = this.height; // work for in memory images. }); }); </script> <style type="text/css"> @media screen { div.divFooter { display: block; } } @media print { .printbutton { display: none !important; } } </style> </head> <body> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="98%" align="center"> <tr> <td class="top_bg"> <div class="divFooter"> <img src="https://im4change.in/images/logo1.jpg" height="59" border="0" alt="Resource centre on India's rural distress" style="padding-top:14px;"/> </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td id="topspace"> </td> </tr> <tr id="topspace"> <td> </td> </tr> <tr> <td height="50" style="border-bottom:1px solid #000; padding-top:10px;" class="printbutton"> <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page " onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%"> <h1 class="news_headlines" style="font-style:normal"> <strong>Food will never become cheaper as expenses rise by Nidhi Nath Srinivas</strong></h1> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" style="font-family:Arial, 'Segoe Script', 'Segoe UI', sans-serif, serif"><font size="3"> <font ><br /></font><div align="justify"><font >Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier even before they reach the market and face the pulls and tugs of rising local demand and exports.</font><br /><br /><font >The farmer’s single biggest cost now is labour. Farm labour wages have doubled in the last year across states and crops. The worst affected are fruits and vegetables because they need careful tending. Onion farmers in Jalgaon last year paid Rs 50 daily for a woman to plant seeds, do the weeding, and later harvest the bulbs. This year, she wants Rs 100 per day. Men demand Rs 150. Cheap labour that gave Indian horticulture its competitive edge is blunting rapidly.</font><br /><br /><font >Field crops are faring no better. Maharashtra sugarcane farmers have agreed with labour unions to pay 25% more for harvesting the crop. Picking cotton is India’s largest on-farm employment opportunity. This year cotton farmers are paying Rs 4.50 for picking each kilo, again double last year. Cost of ploughing, sowing, spraying and weeding each acre is extra. The total labour cost in the current season has touched Rs 10 per kilo.</font><br /><br /><font >In parts of Punjab and Haryana, you can’t get workers at any price, leaving this summer’s paddy standing forlorn in the fields. What has changed? The farm worker’s negotiating power. For the first time. With free monthly ration and government mazdoori available for Rs 100 a day, landless labourers needn’t beg neighbours for work. Work is chasing them. It’s a heady feeling. And disconcerting for the rest of the countryside.</font><br /><br /><font >While labour costs per hectare are zooming, yields per hectare are stagnant. That’s like running a factory at 30-40% capacity. Obviously, the per unit cost swells. Logically, rich farmers growing cash crops should be keenest to increase output. Not so.</font><br /><br /><font >UP cane farmers, Punjab grain farmers, Andhra paddy farmers haven’t used high-tech varieties in years. Only cotton farmers have shown nous in adopting BT technology to double output in six years. Without dramatically boosting volumes, farmers can’t even consider reducing product prices. No FMCG company would either.</font><br /><br /><font >With stagnant yields, bumper harvests only occur when more acres are diverted to a crop, and aided by good weather. Since cultivable land has maxed out, this bounty is at the cost of some other crop. Farmville is nothing to our farmland passing-the-parcel. Government’s MSP acts like the music played randomly to declare a winner. Pulses won this year. Wheat MSP is a deliberate disincentive because the 2% increase doesn’t cover costs.</font><br /><br /><font >As a result, inflation merely hops from pulses to cereals to sugar to oils to vegetables. It never goes away. Yield fatigue implies returns are still too volatile to incentivise technology upgradation. Food prices have to spiral and stay there if India wishes to feed itself.</font><br /><br /></div> </font> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> </td> </tr> <tr> <td height="50" style="border-top:1px solid #000; border-bottom:1px solid #000;padding-top:10px;"> <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page " onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form> </td> </tr> </table></body> </html>' } $reasonPhrase = 'OK'header - [internal], line ?? Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emitStatusLine() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148 Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emit() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 54 Cake\Http\Server::emit() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 141 [main] - ROOT/webroot/index.php, line 39
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$response = object(Cake\Http\Response) { 'status' => (int) 200, 'contentType' => 'text/html', 'headers' => [ 'Content-Type' => [ [maximum depth reached] ] ], 'file' => null, 'fileRange' => [], 'cookies' => object(Cake\Http\Cookie\CookieCollection) {}, 'cacheDirectives' => [], 'body' => '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <link rel="canonical" href="https://im4change.in/<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr68033ee5e8941-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr68033ee5e8941-trace').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none');"><b>Notice</b> (8)</a>: Undefined variable: urlPrefix [<b>APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp</b>, line <b>8</b>]<div id="cakeErr68033ee5e8941-trace" class="cake-stack-trace" style="display: none;"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr68033ee5e8941-code').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr68033ee5e8941-code').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Code</a> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr68033ee5e8941-context').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr68033ee5e8941-context').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr68033ee5e8941-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"></span><span style="color: #007700"><</span><span style="color: #0000BB">head</span><span style="color: #007700">> </span></span></code> <span class="code-highlight"><code><span style="color: #000000"> <link rel="canonical" href="<span style="color: #0000BB"><?php </span><span style="color: #007700">echo </span><span style="color: #0000BB">Configure</span><span style="color: #007700">::</span><span style="color: #0000BB">read</span><span style="color: #007700">(</span><span style="color: #DD0000">'SITE_URL'</span><span style="color: #007700">); </span><span style="color: #0000BB">?><?php </span><span style="color: #007700">echo </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$urlPrefix</span><span style="color: #007700">;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?><?php </span><span style="color: #007700">echo </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-></span><span style="color: #0000BB">category</span><span style="color: #007700">-></span><span style="color: #0000BB">slug</span><span style="color: #007700">; </span><span style="color: #0000BB">?></span>/<span style="color: #0000BB"><?php </span><span style="color: #007700">echo </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-></span><span style="color: #0000BB">seo_url</span><span style="color: #007700">; </span><span style="color: #0000BB">?></span>.html"/> </span></code></span> <code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"> </span><span style="color: #007700"><</span><span style="color: #0000BB">meta http</span><span style="color: #007700">-</span><span style="color: #0000BB">equiv</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"Content-Type" </span><span style="color: #0000BB">content</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"text/html; charset=utf-8"</span><span style="color: #007700">/> </span></span></code></pre><pre id="cakeErr68033ee5e8941-context" class="cake-context" style="display: none;">$viewFile = '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp' $dataForView = [ 'article_current' => object(App\Model\Entity\Article) { 'id' => (int) 4023, 'title' => 'Food will never become cheaper as expenses rise by Nidhi Nath Srinivas', 'subheading' => '', 'description' => '<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3"><br /> </font> <div align="justify"> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier even before they reach the market and face the pulls and tugs of rising local demand and exports.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The farmer&rsquo;s single biggest cost now is labour. Farm labour wages have doubled in the last year across states and crops. The worst affected are fruits and vegetables because they need careful tending. Onion farmers in Jalgaon last year paid Rs 50 daily for a woman to plant seeds, do the weeding, and later harvest the bulbs. This year, she wants Rs 100 per day. Men demand Rs 150. Cheap labour that gave Indian horticulture its competitive edge is blunting rapidly.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Field crops are faring no better. Maharashtra sugarcane farmers have agreed with labour unions to pay 25% more for harvesting the crop. Picking cotton is India&rsquo;s largest on-farm employment opportunity. This year cotton farmers are paying Rs 4.50 for picking each kilo, again double last year. Cost of ploughing, sowing, spraying and weeding each acre is extra. The total labour cost in the current season has touched Rs 10 per kilo.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">In parts of Punjab and Haryana, you can&rsquo;t get workers at any price, leaving this summer&rsquo;s paddy standing forlorn in the fields. What has changed? The farm worker&rsquo;s negotiating power. For the first time. With free monthly ration and government mazdoori available for Rs 100 a day, landless labourers needn&rsquo;t beg neighbours for work. Work is chasing them. It&rsquo;s a heady feeling. And disconcerting for the rest of the countryside.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">While labour costs per hectare are zooming, yields per hectare are stagnant. That&rsquo;s like running a factory at 30-40% capacity. Obviously, the per unit cost swells. Logically, rich farmers growing cash crops should be keenest to increase output. Not so.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">UP cane farmers, Punjab grain farmers, Andhra paddy farmers haven&rsquo;t used high-tech varieties in years. Only cotton farmers have shown nous in adopting BT technology to double output in six years. Without dramatically boosting volumes, farmers can&rsquo;t even consider reducing product prices. No FMCG company would either.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">With stagnant yields, bumper harvests only occur when more acres are diverted to a crop, and aided by good weather. Since cultivable land has maxed out, this bounty is at the cost of some other crop. Farmville is nothing to our farmland passing-the-parcel. Government&rsquo;s MSP acts like the music played randomly to declare a winner. Pulses won this year. Wheat MSP is a deliberate disincentive because the 2% increase doesn&rsquo;t cover costs.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">As a result, inflation merely hops from pulses to cereals to sugar to oils to vegetables. It never goes away. Yield fatigue implies returns are still too volatile to incentivise technology upgradation. Food prices have to spiral and stay there if India wishes to feed itself.</font><br /> <br /> </div>', 'credit_writer' => 'The Economic Times, 1 November, 2010, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/nidhi-nath-srinivas/Food-will-never-become-cheaper-as-expenses-rise/articleshow/6849197.cms', 'article_img' => '', 'article_img_thumb' => '', 'status' => (int) 1, 'show_on_home' => (int) 1, 'lang' => 'EN', 'category_id' => (int) 16, 'tag_keyword' => '', 'seo_url' => 'food-will-never-become-cheaper-as-expenses-rise-by-nidhi-nath-srinivas-4113', 'meta_title' => null, 'meta_keywords' => null, 'meta_description' => null, 'noindex' => (int) 0, 'publish_date' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {}, 'most_visit_section_id' => null, 'article_big_img' => null, 'liveid' => (int) 4113, 'created' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {}, 'modified' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {}, 'edate' => '', 'tags' => [ [maximum depth reached] ], 'category' => object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {}, '[new]' => false, '[accessible]' => [ [maximum depth reached] ], '[dirty]' => [[maximum depth reached]], '[original]' => [[maximum depth reached]], '[virtual]' => [[maximum depth reached]], '[hasErrors]' => false, '[errors]' => [[maximum depth reached]], '[invalid]' => [[maximum depth reached]], '[repository]' => 'Articles' }, 'articleid' => (int) 4023, 'metaTitle' => 'LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Food will never become cheaper as expenses rise by Nidhi Nath Srinivas', 'metaKeywords' => 'Inflation', 'metaDesc' => ' Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier...', 'disp' => '<font ><br /></font><div align="justify"><font >Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier even before they reach the market and face the pulls and tugs of rising local demand and exports.</font><br /><br /><font >The farmer&rsquo;s single biggest cost now is labour. Farm labour wages have doubled in the last year across states and crops. The worst affected are fruits and vegetables because they need careful tending. Onion farmers in Jalgaon last year paid Rs 50 daily for a woman to plant seeds, do the weeding, and later harvest the bulbs. This year, she wants Rs 100 per day. Men demand Rs 150. 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And disconcerting for the rest of the countryside.</font><br /><br /><font >While labour costs per hectare are zooming, yields per hectare are stagnant. That&rsquo;s like running a factory at 30-40% capacity. Obviously, the per unit cost swells. Logically, rich farmers growing cash crops should be keenest to increase output. Not so.</font><br /><br /><font >UP cane farmers, Punjab grain farmers, Andhra paddy farmers haven&rsquo;t used high-tech varieties in years. Only cotton farmers have shown nous in adopting BT technology to double output in six years. Without dramatically boosting volumes, farmers can&rsquo;t even consider reducing product prices. No FMCG company would either.</font><br /><br /><font >With stagnant yields, bumper harvests only occur when more acres are diverted to a crop, and aided by good weather. Since cultivable land has maxed out, this bounty is at the cost of some other crop. Farmville is nothing to our farmland passing-the-parcel. Government&rsquo;s MSP acts like the music played randomly to declare a winner. Pulses won this year. Wheat MSP is a deliberate disincentive because the 2% increase doesn&rsquo;t cover costs.</font><br /><br /><font >As a result, inflation merely hops from pulses to cereals to sugar to oils to vegetables. It never goes away. Yield fatigue implies returns are still too volatile to incentivise technology upgradation. Food prices have to spiral and stay there if India wishes to feed itself.</font><br /><br /></div>', 'lang' => 'English', 'SITE_URL' => 'https://im4change.in/', 'site_title' => 'im4change', 'adminprix' => 'admin' ] $article_current = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) { 'id' => (int) 4023, 'title' => 'Food will never become cheaper as expenses rise by Nidhi Nath Srinivas', 'subheading' => '', 'description' => '<font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3"><br /> </font> <div align="justify"> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier even before they reach the market and face the pulls and tugs of rising local demand and exports.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">The farmer&rsquo;s single biggest cost now is labour. 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Cheap labour that gave Indian horticulture its competitive edge is blunting rapidly.</font><br /><br /><font >Field crops are faring no better. Maharashtra sugarcane farmers have agreed with labour unions to pay 25% more for harvesting the crop. Picking cotton is India&rsquo;s largest on-farm employment opportunity. This year cotton farmers are paying Rs 4.50 for picking each kilo, again double last year. Cost of ploughing, sowing, spraying and weeding each acre is extra. The total labour cost in the current season has touched Rs 10 per kilo.</font><br /><br /><font >In parts of Punjab and Haryana, you can&rsquo;t get workers at any price, leaving this summer&rsquo;s paddy standing forlorn in the fields. What has changed? The farm worker&rsquo;s negotiating power. For the first time. With free monthly ration and government mazdoori available for Rs 100 a day, landless labourers needn&rsquo;t beg neighbours for work. Work is chasing them. It&rsquo;s a heady feeling. And disconcerting for the rest of the countryside.</font><br /><br /><font >While labour costs per hectare are zooming, yields per hectare are stagnant. That&rsquo;s like running a factory at 30-40% capacity. Obviously, the per unit cost swells. Logically, rich farmers growing cash crops should be keenest to increase output. Not so.</font><br /><br /><font >UP cane farmers, Punjab grain farmers, Andhra paddy farmers haven&rsquo;t used high-tech varieties in years. Only cotton farmers have shown nous in adopting BT technology to double output in six years. Without dramatically boosting volumes, farmers can&rsquo;t even consider reducing product prices. No FMCG company would either.</font><br /><br /><font >With stagnant yields, bumper harvests only occur when more acres are diverted to a crop, and aided by good weather. Since cultivable land has maxed out, this bounty is at the cost of some other crop. Farmville is nothing to our farmland passing-the-parcel. Government&rsquo;s MSP acts like the music played randomly to declare a winner. Pulses won this year. Wheat MSP is a deliberate disincentive because the 2% increase doesn&rsquo;t cover costs.</font><br /><br /><font >As a result, inflation merely hops from pulses to cereals to sugar to oils to vegetables. It never goes away. Yield fatigue implies returns are still too volatile to incentivise technology upgradation. Food prices have to spiral and stay there if India wishes to feed itself.</font><br /><br /></div>' $lang = 'English' $SITE_URL = 'https://im4change.in/' $site_title = 'im4change' $adminprix = 'admin'</pre><pre class="stack-trace">include - APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8 Cake\View\View::_evaluate() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1413 Cake\View\View::_render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1374 Cake\View\View::renderLayout() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 927 Cake\View\View::render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 885 Cake\Controller\Controller::render() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 791 Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 126 Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94 Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96 Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65 Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51</pre></div></pre>latest-news-updates/food-will-never-become-cheaper-as-expenses-rise-by-nidhi-nath-srinivas-4113.html"/> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/> <link href="https://im4change.in/css/control.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all"/> <title>LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Food will never become cheaper as expenses rise by Nidhi Nath Srinivas | Im4change.org</title> <meta name="description" content=" Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier..."/> <script src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-1.10.2.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-migrate.min.js"></script> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function () { var img = $("img")[0]; // Get my img elem var pic_real_width, pic_real_height; $("<img/>") // Make in memory copy of image to avoid css issues .attr("src", $(img).attr("src")) .load(function () { pic_real_width = this.width; // Note: $(this).width() will not pic_real_height = this.height; // work for in memory images. }); }); </script> <style type="text/css"> @media screen { div.divFooter { display: block; } } @media print { .printbutton { display: none !important; } } </style> </head> <body> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="98%" align="center"> <tr> <td class="top_bg"> <div class="divFooter"> <img src="https://im4change.in/images/logo1.jpg" height="59" border="0" alt="Resource centre on India's rural distress" style="padding-top:14px;"/> </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td id="topspace"> </td> </tr> <tr id="topspace"> <td> </td> </tr> <tr> <td height="50" style="border-bottom:1px solid #000; padding-top:10px;" class="printbutton"> <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page " onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%"> <h1 class="news_headlines" style="font-style:normal"> <strong>Food will never become cheaper as expenses rise by Nidhi Nath Srinivas</strong></h1> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" style="font-family:Arial, 'Segoe Script', 'Segoe UI', sans-serif, serif"><font size="3"> <font ><br /></font><div align="justify"><font >Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier even before they reach the market and face the pulls and tugs of rising local demand and exports.</font><br /><br /><font >The farmer’s single biggest cost now is labour. Farm labour wages have doubled in the last year across states and crops. The worst affected are fruits and vegetables because they need careful tending. Onion farmers in Jalgaon last year paid Rs 50 daily for a woman to plant seeds, do the weeding, and later harvest the bulbs. This year, she wants Rs 100 per day. Men demand Rs 150. Cheap labour that gave Indian horticulture its competitive edge is blunting rapidly.</font><br /><br /><font >Field crops are faring no better. Maharashtra sugarcane farmers have agreed with labour unions to pay 25% more for harvesting the crop. Picking cotton is India’s largest on-farm employment opportunity. This year cotton farmers are paying Rs 4.50 for picking each kilo, again double last year. Cost of ploughing, sowing, spraying and weeding each acre is extra. The total labour cost in the current season has touched Rs 10 per kilo.</font><br /><br /><font >In parts of Punjab and Haryana, you can’t get workers at any price, leaving this summer’s paddy standing forlorn in the fields. What has changed? The farm worker’s negotiating power. For the first time. With free monthly ration and government mazdoori available for Rs 100 a day, landless labourers needn’t beg neighbours for work. Work is chasing them. It’s a heady feeling. And disconcerting for the rest of the countryside.</font><br /><br /><font >While labour costs per hectare are zooming, yields per hectare are stagnant. That’s like running a factory at 30-40% capacity. Obviously, the per unit cost swells. Logically, rich farmers growing cash crops should be keenest to increase output. Not so.</font><br /><br /><font >UP cane farmers, Punjab grain farmers, Andhra paddy farmers haven’t used high-tech varieties in years. Only cotton farmers have shown nous in adopting BT technology to double output in six years. Without dramatically boosting volumes, farmers can’t even consider reducing product prices. No FMCG company would either.</font><br /><br /><font >With stagnant yields, bumper harvests only occur when more acres are diverted to a crop, and aided by good weather. Since cultivable land has maxed out, this bounty is at the cost of some other crop. Farmville is nothing to our farmland passing-the-parcel. Government’s MSP acts like the music played randomly to declare a winner. Pulses won this year. Wheat MSP is a deliberate disincentive because the 2% increase doesn’t cover costs.</font><br /><br /><font >As a result, inflation merely hops from pulses to cereals to sugar to oils to vegetables. It never goes away. Yield fatigue implies returns are still too volatile to incentivise technology upgradation. Food prices have to spiral and stay there if India wishes to feed itself.</font><br /><br /></div> </font> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> </td> </tr> <tr> <td height="50" style="border-top:1px solid #000; border-bottom:1px solid #000;padding-top:10px;"> <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page " onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form> </td> </tr> </table></body> </html>' } $cookies = [] $values = [ (int) 0 => 'text/html; charset=UTF-8' ] $name = 'Content-Type' $first = true $value = 'text/html; charset=UTF-8'header - [internal], line ?? Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emitHeaders() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181 Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emit() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 55 Cake\Http\Server::emit() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 141 [main] - ROOT/webroot/index.php, line 39
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The worst affected are fruits and vegetables because they need careful tending. Onion farmers in Jalgaon last year paid Rs 50 daily for a woman to plant seeds, do the weeding, and later harvest the bulbs. This year, she wants Rs 100 per day. Men demand Rs 150. Cheap labour that gave Indian horticulture its competitive edge is blunting rapidly.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">Field crops are faring no better. Maharashtra sugarcane farmers have agreed with labour unions to pay 25% more for harvesting the crop. Picking cotton is India’s largest on-farm employment opportunity. This year cotton farmers are paying Rs 4.50 for picking each kilo, again double last year. Cost of ploughing, sowing, spraying and weeding each acre is extra. The total labour cost in the current season has touched Rs 10 per kilo.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">In parts of Punjab and Haryana, you can’t get workers at any price, leaving this summer’s paddy standing forlorn in the fields. What has changed? The farm worker’s negotiating power. For the first time. With free monthly ration and government mazdoori available for Rs 100 a day, landless labourers needn’t beg neighbours for work. Work is chasing them. It’s a heady feeling. And disconcerting for the rest of the countryside.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">While labour costs per hectare are zooming, yields per hectare are stagnant. That’s like running a factory at 30-40% capacity. Obviously, the per unit cost swells. Logically, rich farmers growing cash crops should be keenest to increase output. Not so.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">UP cane farmers, Punjab grain farmers, Andhra paddy farmers haven’t used high-tech varieties in years. Only cotton farmers have shown nous in adopting BT technology to double output in six years. Without dramatically boosting volumes, farmers can’t even consider reducing product prices. No FMCG company would either.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">With stagnant yields, bumper harvests only occur when more acres are diverted to a crop, and aided by good weather. Since cultivable land has maxed out, this bounty is at the cost of some other crop. Farmville is nothing to our farmland passing-the-parcel. Government’s MSP acts like the music played randomly to declare a winner. Pulses won this year. Wheat MSP is a deliberate disincentive because the 2% increase doesn’t cover costs.</font><br /> <br /> <font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">As a result, inflation merely hops from pulses to cereals to sugar to oils to vegetables. It never goes away. Yield fatigue implies returns are still too volatile to incentivise technology upgradation. 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Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier...', 'disp' => '<font ><br /></font><div align="justify"><font >Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier even before they reach the market and face the pulls and tugs of rising local demand and exports.</font><br /><br /><font >The farmer’s single biggest cost now is labour. Farm labour wages have doubled in the last year across states and crops. The worst affected are fruits and vegetables because they need careful tending. Onion farmers in Jalgaon last year paid Rs 50 daily for a woman to plant seeds, do the weeding, and later harvest the bulbs. This year, she wants Rs 100 per day. Men demand Rs 150. Cheap labour that gave Indian horticulture its competitive edge is blunting rapidly.</font><br /><br /><font >Field crops are faring no better. Maharashtra sugarcane farmers have agreed with labour unions to pay 25% more for harvesting the crop. Picking cotton is India’s largest on-farm employment opportunity. This year cotton farmers are paying Rs 4.50 for picking each kilo, again double last year. Cost of ploughing, sowing, spraying and weeding each acre is extra. The total labour cost in the current season has touched Rs 10 per kilo.</font><br /><br /><font >In parts of Punjab and Haryana, you can’t get workers at any price, leaving this summer’s paddy standing forlorn in the fields. What has changed? The farm worker’s negotiating power. For the first time. With free monthly ration and government mazdoori available for Rs 100 a day, landless labourers needn’t beg neighbours for work. Work is chasing them. It’s a heady feeling. And disconcerting for the rest of the countryside.</font><br /><br /><font >While labour costs per hectare are zooming, yields per hectare are stagnant. That’s like running a factory at 30-40% capacity. Obviously, the per unit cost swells. Logically, rich farmers growing cash crops should be keenest to increase output. Not so.</font><br /><br /><font >UP cane farmers, Punjab grain farmers, Andhra paddy farmers haven’t used high-tech varieties in years. Only cotton farmers have shown nous in adopting BT technology to double output in six years. Without dramatically boosting volumes, farmers can’t even consider reducing product prices. No FMCG company would either.</font><br /><br /><font >With stagnant yields, bumper harvests only occur when more acres are diverted to a crop, and aided by good weather. Since cultivable land has maxed out, this bounty is at the cost of some other crop. Farmville is nothing to our farmland passing-the-parcel. Government’s MSP acts like the music played randomly to declare a winner. Pulses won this year. Wheat MSP is a deliberate disincentive because the 2% increase doesn’t cover costs.</font><br /><br /><font >As a result, inflation merely hops from pulses to cereals to sugar to oils to vegetables. It never goes away. Yield fatigue implies returns are still too volatile to incentivise technology upgradation. 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Cheap labour that gave Indian horticulture its competitive edge is blunting rapidly.</font><br /><br /><font >Field crops are faring no better. Maharashtra sugarcane farmers have agreed with labour unions to pay 25% more for harvesting the crop. Picking cotton is India’s largest on-farm employment opportunity. This year cotton farmers are paying Rs 4.50 for picking each kilo, again double last year. Cost of ploughing, sowing, spraying and weeding each acre is extra. The total labour cost in the current season has touched Rs 10 per kilo.</font><br /><br /><font >In parts of Punjab and Haryana, you can’t get workers at any price, leaving this summer’s paddy standing forlorn in the fields. What has changed? The farm worker’s negotiating power. For the first time. With free monthly ration and government mazdoori available for Rs 100 a day, landless labourers needn’t beg neighbours for work. Work is chasing them. It’s a heady feeling. And disconcerting for the rest of the countryside.</font><br /><br /><font >While labour costs per hectare are zooming, yields per hectare are stagnant. That’s like running a factory at 30-40% capacity. Obviously, the per unit cost swells. Logically, rich farmers growing cash crops should be keenest to increase output. Not so.</font><br /><br /><font >UP cane farmers, Punjab grain farmers, Andhra paddy farmers haven’t used high-tech varieties in years. Only cotton farmers have shown nous in adopting BT technology to double output in six years. Without dramatically boosting volumes, farmers can’t even consider reducing product prices. No FMCG company would either.</font><br /><br /><font >With stagnant yields, bumper harvests only occur when more acres are diverted to a crop, and aided by good weather. Since cultivable land has maxed out, this bounty is at the cost of some other crop. Farmville is nothing to our farmland passing-the-parcel. Government’s MSP acts like the music played randomly to declare a winner. Pulses won this year. Wheat MSP is a deliberate disincentive because the 2% increase doesn’t cover costs.</font><br /><br /><font >As a result, inflation merely hops from pulses to cereals to sugar to oils to vegetables. It never goes away. Yield fatigue implies returns are still too volatile to incentivise technology upgradation. Food prices have to spiral and stay there if India wishes to feed itself.</font><br /><br /></div>' $lang = 'English' $SITE_URL = 'https://im4change.in/' $site_title = 'im4change' $adminprix = 'admin'
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Food will never become cheaper as expenses rise by Nidhi Nath Srinivas |
Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier even before they reach the market and face the pulls and tugs of rising local demand and exports.
The farmer’s single biggest cost now is labour. Farm labour wages have doubled in the last year across states and crops. The worst affected are fruits and vegetables because they need careful tending. Onion farmers in Jalgaon last year paid Rs 50 daily for a woman to plant seeds, do the weeding, and later harvest the bulbs. This year, she wants Rs 100 per day. Men demand Rs 150. Cheap labour that gave Indian horticulture its competitive edge is blunting rapidly. Field crops are faring no better. Maharashtra sugarcane farmers have agreed with labour unions to pay 25% more for harvesting the crop. Picking cotton is India’s largest on-farm employment opportunity. This year cotton farmers are paying Rs 4.50 for picking each kilo, again double last year. Cost of ploughing, sowing, spraying and weeding each acre is extra. The total labour cost in the current season has touched Rs 10 per kilo. In parts of Punjab and Haryana, you can’t get workers at any price, leaving this summer’s paddy standing forlorn in the fields. What has changed? The farm worker’s negotiating power. For the first time. With free monthly ration and government mazdoori available for Rs 100 a day, landless labourers needn’t beg neighbours for work. Work is chasing them. It’s a heady feeling. And disconcerting for the rest of the countryside. While labour costs per hectare are zooming, yields per hectare are stagnant. That’s like running a factory at 30-40% capacity. Obviously, the per unit cost swells. Logically, rich farmers growing cash crops should be keenest to increase output. Not so. UP cane farmers, Punjab grain farmers, Andhra paddy farmers haven’t used high-tech varieties in years. Only cotton farmers have shown nous in adopting BT technology to double output in six years. Without dramatically boosting volumes, farmers can’t even consider reducing product prices. No FMCG company would either. With stagnant yields, bumper harvests only occur when more acres are diverted to a crop, and aided by good weather. Since cultivable land has maxed out, this bounty is at the cost of some other crop. Farmville is nothing to our farmland passing-the-parcel. Government’s MSP acts like the music played randomly to declare a winner. Pulses won this year. Wheat MSP is a deliberate disincentive because the 2% increase doesn’t cover costs. As a result, inflation merely hops from pulses to cereals to sugar to oils to vegetables. It never goes away. Yield fatigue implies returns are still too volatile to incentivise technology upgradation. Food prices have to spiral and stay there if India wishes to feed itself. |