Anamika and Ram Chandra

The minimum support price (MSP) is an administered agricultural product price established by the GOI to purchase directly from farmers, depending on a wide variety of monetary and non-price features. MSP is fixed on the recommendations of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), an apex advisory body for governing pricing policy under the Ministry of Agriculture. MSP's effectiveness takes towards totally new meaning. The Terms of Trade were against agriculture until the mid-sixties, then turned somewhat in favour of agriculture for a brief period in the late sixties and early seventies, only to turn back against agriculture in the late seventies and early eighties. The Agricultural Prices Commission's (APC) primary focus was on lowering price change in food grains to protect consumers from price increases, offering price incentives to farmers and encourage producers to use new technologies.

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