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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Lower returns on produce behind farmers' distress -Roshan Kishore

Lower returns on produce behind farmers' distress -Roshan Kishore

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published Published on Jun 24, 2018   modified Modified on Jun 24, 2018
-Hindustan Times

Profitability takes a hit as real MSPs have not risen over the years

New Delhi:
Most commentary around rural anger in India has been focused on either the sector’s growth performance or government spending on agriculture. Such analysis is likely to present an incomplete picture at best. Government spending on agriculture is a small fraction of the total agricultural economic output. In 2017-18, the ministry of agriculture’s spending was less than 2% of agriculture’s contribution to Gross Value Added that year. And the narrative around rural distress has actually become more pronounced in the period which saw a revival in agricultural growth.

It needs to be understood that what matters the most from the farmers’ point of view is the return they get on their produce.

Stories of farmers dumping their output, especially perishables such as tomatoes, in acts of desperate protests in India are becoming increasingly common.

Such actions are triggered by a drastic crash in farm-gate prices, which often go below even the cost of cultivation. Such price crashes are rarely, if at all, matched by a reduction in prices of processed food items, such as tomato ketchup.

This is not entirely unexpected. Food processing industries are better equipped in terms of both financial and logistical capabilities to withstand cyclical fluctuations in markets than farmers.

To be sure, this asymmetry in economic abilities is not something new.

However, an HT analysis shows that the farmers have ceded further ground in this bargain under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in comparison the situation under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime.

Looking at the trends in Wholesale Price Index (WPI) of primary food items and manufactured food items can help us capture this trend.

If the latter is increasing at a faster rate than the former for a prolonged period, one can argue that food processing industries are effectively squeezing farmers’ incomes by not passing on the benefit of higher prices they are receiving back to the farmer.

If, in contrast, primary food item prices are rising at a faster rate than that of manufactured food items, it would mean that the food processing industry is unable to pass on the higher prices it is paying for raw materials to consumers. WPI is used due to two reasons.

One, it allows the analysis to go back to the UPA period unlike the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) series, which starts in 2012, towards the end of the UPA’s rule. And two, it is more representative of the prices received by farmers as they sell their output in wholesale markets.

A monthly analysis of annual change in each of these sub-components of WPI shows that for most of the time the UPA was in power, WPI for primary food articles was growing at a faster pace than WPI for manufactured food items. The trend almost reversed from the second year of the NDA government’s rule.

This becomes clearer from looking at the columns in Chart 1 which plot the difference in annual growth of WPI for primary food items and manufactured food products. Difference between growth in prices of primary food items and manufactured food items first started coming down and then went into negative territory for almost a year. After a recovery this value seems to be heading down once again.

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Hindustan Times, 19 June, 2018, https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/lower-returns-to-blame-for-farmers-dumping-their-produce-in-protests/story-2RGlxNGDwUIn29btjHk9kK.html


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