Karandikars & Associates

Minimum Support Price Foodgrain

The Government`s price policy for major agricultural commodities seeks to ensure remunerative prices to the growers for their produce with a view to encouraging higher investment and production and to safeguard the interest of consumers by making available supplies at reasonable prices

Towards this end, Government announces Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) for twenty-two (22) mandated crops based on the recommendations of the Commission for Agricultural Costs & Prices (CACP) after considering the views of concerned State Governments and Central Ministries/Departments

The 22 mandated crops include 14 Kharif crops viz. paddy, jowar, bajra, maize, ragi, arhar, moong, urad, groundnut, soybean (yellow), sunflower seed, sesamum, nigerseed, cotton and 6 Rabi crops viz. wheat, barley, gram, masur (lentil), rapeseed & mustard, saflower and two commercial crops viz. jute and copra. In addition to that, MSP for toria and de-husked coconut are also fixed on the basis of MSPs of rapeseed & ustard and copra respectively

While recommending MSPs, CACP considers important factors like cost of production, overall demand-supply situation of various crops in domestic and world markets, domestic and international prices, inter-crop price parity, terms of trade between agricultural and non-agricultural sector, likely effect of price policy on rest of the economy and a minimum of 50 percent as the margin over cost of production

The Union Budget for 2018-19 had announced the pre-determined principle to keep MSP at levels of one and half times of the cost of production. Accordingly, Government has increased the MSPs for all mandated Kharif, Rabi and other commercial crops with a return of atleast 50 per cent over all India weighted average cost of production from the agricultural year 2018-19

A "quintal" is a unit of weight, most commonly equivalent to 100 kilograms or 220.46 pounds, used for measuring large quantities in trade and agriculture

Table below captures MSPs for major foodgrains (Source: RBI Handbook of Statistics)

For 2024-25, the MSP for paddy (rice) was Rs 2300.0 per quintal, for Maize it was Rs 2225.0 per quintal, for Wheat it was Rs 2425.0 per quintal, for Gram (Commonly known as "Chana" in India) it was Rs 5650.0 per quintal, for Arhar or Tur it was Rs 7550.0 per quintal, for Moong it was Rs 8682.0 per quintal and for Urad it was Rs 7400.0 pwer quintal

View the trends graphically