Minimum Support Prices for Foodgrains:Guidelines for a Policy and a Programme

The demand for a minimum support price for foodgrains comes from the producers of foodgrains. Naturally, in the minds of many, the demand for and the concept of minimum support price are closely associated with the notion of 'cost of production' of foodgrains. One of the reasons, possibly a minor one, for the failure to evolve a public policy and a programme in this field in the past has been the difficulty of knowing what the 'cost of production' meant in this context and an imperfect understanding of how it might be related, in concept and in operation, to a minimum support price.