{"id":73762,"date":"2020-12-19T17:49:51","date_gmt":"2020-12-19T12:19:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=73762"},"modified":"2021-03-11T14:29:43","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T08:59:43","slug":"msp-for-other-crops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/msp-for-other-crops\/","title":{"rendered":"MSP for other crops"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Context:<\/strong>\u00a0Need to extend <a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/msp-for-other-crops\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">MSP for other crops<\/a> to promote crop diversification.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How India achieved self-sufficiency in food grain production mainly in wheat and rice?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Ship-to-mouth situation in India:<\/strong>\u00a0In the early 1960s, near-famine conditions prevailed in India and some 10 million tonnes of wheat had to be imported from the US under the PL480 programme.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Green Revolution:<\/strong>\u00a0With the efforts of M S Swaminathan seeds of high-yielding dwarf wheat varieties were procured from Norman Borlaug wheat-improvement programme and were distributed to the Indian Agricultural Research Institutes. These high yielding seeds ushered the era of Green revolution in India.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Self-sufficiency:<\/strong>\u00a0With favourable government policies, efforts of agricultural scientists and due to the immense contributions of farmers of Punjab, Haryana and western UP, India achieved self-sufficiency in food grain production mainly in wheat and rice.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Why the farmers from \u201cfood bowl \u201cregion are against the new farm bills?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>First<\/strong>, the Farmers of the \u201cfood-bowl\u201d states have been selling food grains (mainly wheat and rice) at <a href=\"https:\/\/farmer.gov.in\/mspstatements.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Minimum Support Price (MSP)<\/a> since the mid-1960s.<\/li>\n<li>This has helped the central government create a central pool of food grains and the Public Distribution System (PDS) to help the poor.<\/li>\n<li>However, MSP has not been guaranteed in the newly enacted farm laws, which is the major bone of contention.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Second,<\/strong>\u00a0the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees (APMCs) are under threat from the new farm laws. Many experts feel that MSP and APMC go hand-in-hand. This has created uncertainty in the minds of farmers about the continuation of MSP.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Third,<\/strong>\u00a0though the new farm laws are meant to eliminate the \u201cmiddlemen\u201d (arhtiyas), farmers feel that a new class of middlemen, that is, lawyers belonging to big companies, will emerge leaving small farmers at a distinct disadvantage. (more than 80 per cent of farmers own less than five acres of land).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Fourth,<\/strong>\u00a0according to the central government, the new laws will ensure contract farming<strong>.\u00a0<\/strong>However, the farmers feel that the big companies might become monopolies, and exploit both farmers and consumers. Farmers fear being made into labourers<strong>.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Apart from these issues<\/strong>, the manner in which the bills are passed without consultation of stakeholders and lack of discussion in the parliament has provoked a reactionary response from farmers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What is the way forward?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Guarantee MSP<\/strong>: A clause should be added in the law to the effect that no matter who buys the producing government or a private entity, the farmer must be given MSP.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Implementation of MS Swaminathan committee recommendation<\/strong>: The National Farmers\u2019 Commission recommended providing an MSP of 50 percent over and above a farmer\u2019s input expenses must be implemented.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Need for Special MSP<\/strong>: MSP should be determined on the basis of grain quality. For example, wheat varieties grown in the \u201cfood bowl\u201d states contain 11 percent protein compared to 7 percent protein grown elsewhere.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Promote crop diversification<\/strong>: Government needs to purchase crops produced other than wheat and rice at MSP. This could help conserve underground water and soil fertility.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Encourage farmers to grow high-value crops<\/strong>: For this to happen the government should set up an adequate cold-chain infrastructure so that perishable products can be kept longer and sold at an appropriate time.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Discussions, Deliberation, Debate<\/strong>: Including intellectuals like M S Swaminathan, Gurdev S Khush, Surinder K Vasal, and Rattan Lal in the \u201cAgricultural Think Tank\u201d and\u00a0 they should be consulted by Niti Aayog<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Context:\u00a0Need to extend MSP for other crops to promote crop diversification. How India achieved self-sufficiency in food grain production mainly in wheat and rice? Ship-to-mouth situation in India:\u00a0In the early 1960s, near-famine conditions prevailed in India and some 10 million tonnes of wheat had to be imported from the US under the PL480 programme. Green&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/msp-for-other-crops\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">MSP for other crops<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":73764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,1351,1310,9],"tags":[1285,1275,1471],"class_list":["post-73762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-daily-news","category-daily-news-updates","category-public","tag-agri_0","tag-agri_1","tag-farm_laws_related_issues","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/MSP-for-other-crops.jpg?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704671687},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}