Status and experiences of implementation of price support and market intervention scheme in Rajasthan

An attempt is made in this paper to study the status and experiences of implementation of price support and market intervention scheme in Rajasthan. Agricultural price policy in India is one of the important instruments in achieving food security by improving production, employment and incomes of the farmers. Although price support policy linked to procurement, has served the country well in the past three decades, it has come under severe scrutiny and attack for various reasons in the recent years. The Central agency often incurs loss in their operation of PSS and MIS and despite of considerable amount of public money spent in undertaking the above schemes; yet plight of growers of many of the agriculture commodities continues. In fact, the market price of many agricultural commodities continues to rule below the MSP. It was observed that RAJFED and Tilam Sangh are the major partners of FCI involved in the procurement of wheat, rapeseed in Rajasthan. The crops such as wheat, gram and rapeseed mustard were procured under PSS, whereas garlic, coriander and onion were procured under MIS. About 22 percent farmers in case of gram and 10 percent farmers in case of garlic opined that there was increase in farm income due to PSS and MIS, while about 65 percent and 48 percent farmers respectively mentioned that PSS/MIS covered cost of production of targeted crop. Significant number of farmers opined that the increase in area under these crops was due to PSS/MIS. Most of the farmers mentioned that long and lengthy process and non receipt of good remunerative price, delayed procurement process, did not get chance to sell produce under scheme. Due to some kind of political interference, very less quantity was procured under the scheme and rejection of produce were some major problems faced by them. Thus, in order to give remunerative prices to the farmers and to prevent them from distress sale, these bottlenecks need to be removed. Procurement agency should come to purchase as soon as the harvesting is over, not after two weeks of harvest. The storage and processing facilities need to be created on priority basis.