Agriculture & Rural Economy — PPSC previous year questions

The Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) recommends the Minimum Support Price. Set up in 1965 as the Agricultural Prices Commission and attached to the Ministry of Agriculture, it advises on MSPs for 22 crops plus the fair and remunerative price for sugarcane, weighing cost of production, demand and supply, price trends and terms of trade; its advice is not binding and the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs takes the final decision. The stem is loose on the second item: the Central Issue Price at which foodgrains are sold through the PDS is fixed by the Union Government (Department of Food and Public Distribution), not recommended by the CACP.

APMCs are set up under state APMC Acts. They regulate notified market yards (mandis). There the first sale of farm produce must happen under their supervision, through licensed commission agents (arhtiyas). A market fee is levied on each deal. Export rules, farm subsidies and MSP fixation are Central Government functions, through DGFT, the ministries and CACP recommendations. They are not APMC functions.

The APMC Act (Agricultural Produce Market Committee) is a state law that sets up regulated mandis where farmers sell their produce, so it deals with agricultural marketing, not credit or irrigation.

Minimum Support Price is the guaranteed price at which the government buys notified crops. So it assures farmers a minimum price (1). The buffer stocks and PDS supplies that follow support food security (2). MSP has not been withdrawn. The Centre announces it every season for 22–23 crops on the advice of the CACP. So statement 3 is wrong.

Feminisation of agriculture means a rising share of farm work being done by women. It happens mainly because men migrate from villages to towns for better-paid jobs, leaving women to run the fields; land is still rarely owned by women.

A Farmer Producer Organisation is a registered company or cooperative owned by farmers, fishermen or rural artisans. The 2020 scheme for 10,000 FPOs forms them in clusters on the One District One Product approach, and NABARD (along with SFAC and NCDC) is an implementing agency, so all three statements are true.

To join e-NAM and draw Central assistance, a state must carry out three market reforms. It needs a single trading licence valid across the state. It needs a single-point levy of market fee. It needs electronic auction/trading as the mode of price discovery. Statements 1 and 4 describe two of these reforms. A fee at every point of sale and separate mandi-wise licences are exactly what the reforms replace.

The Shanta Kumar Committee (2014–15) was a high-level committee chaired by former Union minister Shanta Kumar. It was set up to suggest restructuring and reform of the Food Corporation of India. It suggested reducing FCI's procurement role, cash transfers in place of grain, and cutting NFSA coverage to 40% of the population. Administrative reforms, doubling farmers' income (Dalwai Committee) and the DPP review belong to other committees.

The Planning Commission's Panel on Land Reforms recommended a ceiling of three times the 'family holding'. A family holding is the area that supports a family of five and can be cultivated with a pair of bullocks. The Second Five Year Plan (1956–61) endorsed this recommendation. The states then enacted ceiling laws in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Fourth Plan period saw the 1972 national guidelines tighten the limits.

A Self-Help Group is an informal, voluntary association of 10–20 poor people, mostly rural women. They pool savings and lend among themselves. The group is formed through social mobilisation for their own betterment and poverty reduction. It is later linked to banks under the NABARD SHG–Bank Linkage programme. It is not an NGO attached to the Panchayat to assist the administration.