The FAS blog team had a discussion with Vijoo Krishnan, Joint Secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha, on the current agricultural policy environment and implications of policy changes for the peasantry on August 9, 2019 in Bengaluru.
The Union Government announced minimum support prices (MSP) for 17 agricultural commodities (14 kharif crops) on July 4, 2018. The announcement came in the backdrop of the assurance provided by the Prime Minister to sugarcane farmers that the Government is going to provide MSP for kharif crops at one and half times of production cost. However, a closer look at the MSP reveals that for no crop was MSP more than 50 per cent of production cost.
