MUMBAI: Finance minister Arun Jaitley 's announcement in the Budget promising minimum support price 1.5 times of the input cost was meant to assuage the rural community. The Commissioner for Agricultural Costs and Price (CACP) decides the MSP averaging the input cost of different states to fix the MSP for a crop.This fixing of the average proves detrimental for a state like Maharashtra that has high input costs. So even if he gets an MSP it would still not be enough for the farmer here, considering the high investment he has done. When farmers are already getting a low price they still allow import of the products this leads to further losses for the farmers-. "said Patil.Patil was referring to the onion farmers in Maharashtra, which is one of the biggest producers of the crop.

Source: Economic Times February 03, 2018 06:22 UTC