-Outlook The downward trend in vegetable prices continues owing to consistent rise in supply. On March 6, more than 35,000 farmers trekked 180 km over six days from Nashik to Mumbai under the banner of the Akhil Bhartiya Kisan Sabha (AIKS) of the CPI(M) with a slew of demands, including right to forest land and a complete loan waiver. The next day, a farmer took 50 kg of brinjals to Ahmednagar ‘mandi’ in...
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Why crop prices are falling despite higher MSP, stiffer import tariffs -Rajalakshmi Nirmal
-The Hindu Business Line Surge in production of most crops; demand-supply equation driving prices The Centre’s moves to stop domestic market prices of agri commodities from falling, be it by increasing the minimum support price (MSP), hiking import duty or levying a minimum import price (as in the case of pepper), have not been effective. While market prices do go up in a knee-jerk reaction following the news, they soon revert to...
More »Agricultural sector growth slows down to 3%, show new estimates
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has recently made an upward revision to the growth to be experienced by the agrarian economy in the present crop year (viz. from July, 2017 to June, 2018). The growth in real Gross Value Added (GVA) by the agrarian sector as a whole is expected to be 3.0 percent in 2017-18 as per the second advance estimates of national income for 2017-18, which was released...
More »Farm woes and the upcoming polls -Tushar Arora & Abheek Barua
-The Hindu Business Line An analysis of how agri concerns will play out in four poll-bound States this year has some key takeaways for politicians ‘Rural distress’ became the major economic narrative to interpret the recent Assembly elections results for Gujarat, specifically the fact that rural support for the incumbent government was considerably less than the support from cities. The woes of the rural sector could be a bigger issue this year. Of...
More »The changing politics of food price inflation -Sonal Varma and Aurodeep Nandi
-Livemint.com Linking MSPs to a multiple of costs and ignoring other dynamics, such as demand and global prices, risks creating distortions and disincentivizing productivity Government policymaking seems to be making a volte-face from supporting consumers (by keeping food inflation low), to supporting producers (by raising food prices). In the 2018-19 Union budget, the government “decided to keep minimum support prices (MSP) for all unannounced crops of kharif at least at one-and-a-half times of...
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