198. Negotiating the Path from Farms to Tables

The recent proposal by the current government to reform agricultural markets through three controversial farm laws, the farmer protests that ensued, and the ultimate repeal of these laws has raised questions on what a desired policy on agricultural markets should be.

Providing farmers access to agricultural markets in a mode that benefits both farmer and consumer has proven elusive. At one end is the mode adopted by the farm laws - a privatisation of agricultural markets by offering space and incentives for private corporate investment, creating a fear that this will lead to a take over by profit-grabbing corporates who exploit both farmers and consumers. The demand of the farmer protests for strong state intervention guaranteeing minimum-support-prices and purchase commitments has been criticised as creating market inefficiencies, that it overlooks structural problems and the presence of inconsistencies in the current mandi system, and that it will also create problems for India in abiding to commitments made to WTO rules. A middle ground of reform based on a structure of cooperatives, as was done for the dairy industry, has received insufficient attention.

The debate also overlooks the fact that most agricultural holdings in India are termed as ‘marginal’, below five acres in size, leading to both inefficiencies and exploitation in agricultural markets under current conditions.

In this episode of BIC Talks, which is an extract from a virtual BIC Streams a session that took place in early September 2022, Sudha Narayanan, Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute, New Delhi; T. Nandakumar, Former Secretary Food & Agriculture, Government of India and Prakash Kammardi, Former Chairman, Karnataka Agricultural Prices Commission engage in a discussion, moderated by Editor, The India Forum & Founder-Trustee, Vichar Trust C. Rammanohar Reddy, in which they will seek to identify and reflect on, the vision and structure of a sensible policy on agricultural markets in India.

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