In India, we have this concept of “Minimum Support Price” for agricultural commodities. It is basically an unlimited put option written by the Government in order to protect farmers against not getting “appropriate remuneration” for their produce. In that sense it can be thought of as an implicit subsidy towards agriculture. There is merit in the argument in favour of such a measure – agriculture is a fundamentally high risk business and in the absence of such safety nets, not enough people might take the risk to sow a particular crop, leading to shortages.
On the other hand, it can be distortionary too. If the MSP is set too high, it can lead to a glut in that particular crop in that year, at the cost of other crops, leading to shortages in the latter. Hence, it is a tool that is necessary but one that should be used with care.
Now, the MSP has to be set in advance – so the MSP for the 2013-14 season has already been set. This is again a risky move but a necessary move – farmers need to know the minimum amount they can get for each crop before they make their sowing decision.
The figure on shows the Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) in the MSP of a few important agricultural commodities between 2007-08 and 2013-14. Notice that the CAGR is lowest for crops such as wheat or rice, and high for crops such as Tur Dal or Moong Dal. Under the current Public Distribution System (PDS), families below the poverty line get rice and wheat at subsidized rates, but not pulses. Note that I’m only mentioning facts and not trying to suggest any causation here.
Interestingly, the MSP for coarse grains such as Ragi and Bajra has also grown significantly faster than that of rice or wheat. Also note that prices of cotton and jute have grown rather slowly over the period of consideration.
Now, while this tells us by how much prices have changed in the last six years, it is also pertinent to see how the prices have changed – did the price rise consistently over the last 5-6 years or were there some discontinuities? The next figure tries to address this issue.
The figure on the left here charts the actual year by year growth in the Minimum Support price of the crops under consideration. To me, two things jump out from this graph – apart from sugarcane, there was a steep increase in the minimum support prices of all commodities between 2007-8 and 2008-9. You might want to be reminded that India went to polls in the summer of 2009 and Maharashtra, a prime sugarcane growing state, went to polls in the winter of the same year. Again, I don’t want to claim any causation.
Then, from 2009 to 2012, minimum support prices of these commodities remained largely constant – perhaps compensating for the large jump from 2008 to 09? And then again there was a spike from 2012 to 2013. There is no such jump from 2013 to 2014, though. Note that the nation goes to the polls in 2014.
Tur and Moong dal, however, have seen a rather secular increase in prices in the last five-six years.
How the proposed Food Security Bill will affect the MSP is left as an exercise to the reader. Comments are open.
PS: Data that I’ve used for this post is available at the website of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices.
thank you for linking to the data source!
A nice analysis though. MSP are higher in case of cotton, pulses to give it an additional export boost. One also has to take into consideration the consumption pattern, rate and crops variant grown. If cotton cropping is not given a boost, considering it is exported, foreign reserves would get hampered. Now rice and wheat cannot be given the same weightage for obvious reasons. Incentivizing farmers for such would to lead to issues such as losses to over produce due to lack of adequate infras and this being the basic commodity, a loss would result in mayhem and anyhow wheat and rice got to be cropped given its importance in a nation where rice is a primary diet. hence no need for higher incentives. If the produce is adequate and consumed without loss, a higher MSP might not be required.