Question raised in Rajya Sabha on Benefit of MSP to Majority of Farmers, 26/07/2019. To provide the benefit of Minimum Support Price (MSP) to farmers, Government agencies procure the notified agricultural produce of Fair Average Quality (FAQ) at MSP directly from farmers in consultation with the concerned State Government / Union Territory as and when market price of these produce fall below the MSP, as per prescribed guidelines. The payments to the farmers are made through Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS)/National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT) and account payee cheque by the procuring agencies. However, if farmers gets better price in comparison to MSP, they are free to sell their produce in open market. The details of total number of farmers who received MSP for the notified foodgrains during the last five years are at annexure-I and
annexure-II. Moreover, another benefit of procurement at MSP is that some of the excess supply of the commodity is sucked out of the market through these operations, so that better prices are offered even by market to the other farmers. In such a way the benefit of MSP procurement reaches even those farmers whose harvest was not directly procured under MSP.