Swaminathan urges Centre to continue with MSP

Eminent agricultural scientist M S Swaminathan on Tuesday asked the government to continue the practice of fixing minimum support price for farm products and focus on better demand management to prevent wastages.

"The minimum support price acts as a balance and a barometer of the floor price. The government should continue with the practice of fixing MSP for agricultural produces," Swaminathan said here.

He said the Centre should also focus on better demand management in agricultural sector to ensure that wastages occurring due to over supply could be minimised.

Citing the example of China, where the government pre-determines the production level after assessing the demand condition, he said the Indian agricultural sector needed to follow such practices to reduce wastages occurring due to lack of marketability of the excess supply.

Swaminathan, who was speaking at a seminar on 'Agriculture: emerging opportunities with focus on Indo-US business,' also called for revival of the rural godown scheme and implementation of community-centred food security system through panchayati raj network.

Stressing on an 'integrated approach' adopted by the government and the farm sector, he said the agricultural workers should have "quality literacy, productivity literacy, ecological literacy, trade literacy, digital literacy and genetic literacy and knowledge about intellectual property rights" for overall improvement in performance through modern farming techniques.