Middlemen and retailers seemed to have cornered a large part of the price paid by consumers, thus profiteering at the cost of farmers, during the time of high inflation in case of fruits and vegetables, various working papers released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) show.
In four working papers prepared by the RBI’s Department of Economy & Policy Research, farmers are found to have earned far less share of the consumer rupee in the case of fruits, including banana, grapes and mangoes and essential vegetables such as tomatoes, onions and potatoes while their share was much higher in case of dairy and poultry farming and in case of pulses.
As per the working paper titled Livestock and Poultry Inflation in India, co-authored by Shyma Jose, Manish Kumar Prasad, Sabarni Chowdhury, Binod B. Bhoi, Vimal Kishore, Himani Shekhar and Ashok Gulati, the farmers’ share in the consumer rupee is estimated at 70% for milk and 75% for eggs; for poultry meat, the share of farmers and aggregators taken together is 56%.
According to Working Paper titled Price Dynamics and Value Chain of Fruits in India co-authored by Raya Das, Ranjana Roy, Sanchit Gupta, Sanjib Bordoloi, Rishabh Kumar, Renjith Mohan and Ashok Gulati the farmers’ share in the consumer rupee is estimated at about 31% for bananas, 35% for grapes and 43% for mangoes in the domestic value chain.
The Working Paper titled Pulses Inflation in India co-authored by Shyma Jose, Sanchit Gupta, Manish Kumar Prasad, Sandip Das, Asish Thomas George, Thangzason Sonna, D. Suganthi and Ashok Gulati finds that about 75% of the consumer rupee spent on gram (chana) circulates back to farmers while the share is about 70% for moong and 65% for tur.
RBI’s Working Paper titled Vegetables Inflation in India co-authored by Ranjana Roy, Sanchit Gupta, Harsh Wardhan, Suvendu Sarkar, Soumasree Tewari, Rohan Bansal, Shelja Bhatia and Ashok Gulati estimates farmers’ share in the consumer rupee to be about 33% for tomatoes, 36% for onions and 37% for potatoes.
Published – October 03, 2024 08:30 pm IST
