Food Management Revisited

The paper presents a critical review of the government’s food management operations and, in the context of the present environment for policy reforms, advocates a new approach for the management of food economy. For this purpose, it outlines a production-oriented farm price policy, and works out the operational details for making the management of food economy more efficient. The paper also estimates the stock requirements for food management over the next five years. It finds that a relatively smaller storage plan (a minimum reserve of about 5 million tonnes and a maximum reserve of about 15 million tonnes) would be adequate to stabilise price, farm income and consumption within reasonable limits.