Combating Food Price Rise in Mexico

When there was a food price crisis in 2008, the Mexican Government established a Oportunidadaes Programme, where it provided cash to poor families on the condition that children attended school and the family members regularly visited health centres.

Though the programme had been introduced in 1997, they realized that food subsidies were not effective in reducing poverty and were very expensive.   Administrative costs amounted to 40% of the total!

Cash transfers increased with the school grade and also were higher for girls in middle school.  Although it did not fully compensate for the increased food pries, it provided atleast 25% of the population with major protection.  The programme also has been found to improve the health of children and adults and raising the nutrition and school enrolment levels.

How is this programme as compared to the Rs 1 /kg of rice that is promoted in few of our states?

Plugging gaps in warehousing and storage

The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development has opened its doors to private industry.  Private firms can pitch for a Rs 2000 crore fund.  It covers all dry, wet, and cold storage needs of agriculture produce and agriculture inputs.

Earlier, NABARD had restricted itself to lending to only State Governments.  This is in order to plug the gaps and meet the needs in warehousing and storage of agri produce.  The fund is also available for State Governments, and will be made available on a first-come-first served basis. The interest is at 6.5% for the first seven years. Private firms will have a pay a small risk premium for repayments after the seven year period.

In AP, the shortage of storage facility has led to a crisis in the last season and affected both support price and procurement of paddy.  Under this scheme, if new godowns are constructed, it can help overcome the problem

Read the report  - The Hindu Business Line - September 30

India vs China

This is an interesting post that appeared in WSJ blog, by Lakshman Krishnamurthi and Sugandha Kandelwal, both from Kellogs school.  These are some important points from their post, which is the first one in the series.

                                        (Getty Images - also on WSJ blog)

The most important way of decreasing poverty in India is to increase farm incomes.  India has the largest arable land in the world next to the US. It is marginally larger than China, but yet China is the largest producer of rice, wheat, fruits and vegetables.  India's agriculture production is low.  Even though India has more land under paddy cultivation, China out produces India by a wide margin.  Even in cotton production where India has improved the production, China leads.

A major factor for India's low productivity is the low individual farm holdings. Small farms have become smaller and farmers lack access to farm inputs and credit. But surprisingly, Chinese farm holdings have become smaller.

The goal in the current five year plan is to increase annual food production by 20 million tonnes.  A severe drought decreased the production, but by March this year it had risen to 241 million tonnes, well on target.

The writers will continue their writing and we will cover it here.

Farmers go back to college

Pic and report from The Hindu, Sept 22,2011

Nearly 200 students aged 27 years to 75 years have enlisted for a three year open and distance education course called Bachelor of Farm Technology (BFT) at the Tamil Nadu Agriculture University, Coimbatore. The course was conceived by the Vice Chancellor, who observed that 10th class school dropouts who are into farming in Israel were so well informed.   The oldest student Mr Sundaranand is 80 years old.  He  feels that now he is now equipped with more scientific knowledge and approaches farming differently.  He firmly believes that farmers should be aware of new technologies.   


The teachers appreciate the fact that the 'older' students are very eager to learn.  


The course aims to create awareness among people about the many new technologies, crop growing, inputs and subsidies that the Government offers to farmers. In fact there is one paper in the last semester that deals with effective management of labour.


Read more of this article here.