Agriculture Policies in India – proposes a set of policy measures that, taken together, would improve the incomes of farm households, improve nutrition outcomes for the most vulnerable members of Indian society, enable the farm and food sector to grow sustainably, and strengthen India’s competitiveness in global food markets.

The Report Highlights :

1. Notable progress made by the country’s agricultural sector over the past two decades.

2. The important challenges confronting the sector.

3. Declining but still persistent food insecurity and nutrition deficiencies, large numbers of small and resource poor farms

4. Increasing water scarcity, low productivity growth, and the uncertain impacts of climate change.

Findings:

1. There is no sufficiently strong mechanism exists to bring state and central level policy makers together to discuss problems, design solutions, and monitor performance for agriculture and allied sector.

2. Farmers in India are impacted by a combination of complex domestic market regulations and by import and export trade restrictions, which together often lead to producer prices that are below comparable international market levels.

3. Despite large subsidies to fertilisers, power, and irrigation, which offset somewhat the price-depressing effect of market interventions, the overall effect is that policy intervention actually reduces gross farm revenues by over 6% per year.

4. This is partly policy-induced and partly related to other inefficiencies in the marketing chain.

5. The report finds that consumers pay on average 25% less on all commodities as the result of policy interventions.