Excess of Rice & Wheat Production is Hurting Indian Agricultural Production: Nitin Gadkari

Modi Government’s minimum support prices (MSP) are way higher than domestic and international rates said Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday while addressing through a webinar. “The prominent issue in this sector is the international price for agricultural commodities and the vast difference in the price in the market and the MSP. Now there are many new problems of which some are political. It is difficult to make decisions,” he said.

“However, the ground reality is that our MSP is higher than rates of domestic and international. This will create a big economic crisis in the city.”

We need to find some different options, an alternative for that. Without solving problems in agriculture we cannot increase our purchasing power parity which in return affects the growth of the economy he said.

At present India has a surplus of Rice and Wheat and there is a problem with the storage of these grains. “In the agriculture area, we have a clear surplus problem of rice and wheat, we don’t have a place for storage. It is full past three years,” said the Union Minister.

Gadkari suggested formulating a policy to convert rice into ethanol or bio-ethanol."Presently our ethanol production is Rs 20,000 crore and imports are Rs 6-7 lakh crore. So now we are planning to make ethanol economy of Rs 1 lakh crore," he said.

He added that states like Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana have a problem of growing overly they need to reduce the acreage of wheat and rice. He further added that India imports a huge quantity of edible oil worth around Rs 90,000 crore as India’s edible oil production is less which we need to increase.

Soybean production in Brazil and The United States per acre is 27-28 quintal and 30 quintals while in India it is 4.5 quintal per acre. There is a need to research the production of quality oilseeds in the country for higher production.