Loading…
Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Shivraj Singh Chouhan held a virtual review with Madhya Pradesh's Agriculture and Horticulture Ministers on summer moong procurement and crop insurance implementation.
For the 2026 season the Centre initially approved procurement of 4,54,580 tonnes of summer moong for Madhya Pradesh and later added 84,492 tonnes, taking the approved quantity to 5,39,072 tonnes; actual procurement closed at 5.33 lakh tonnes, within the approved limit.
Procurement was carried out mainly through NAFED and NCCF, and improved on summer 2025, when 3,93,123.79 tonnes were procured against an approved 4,19,692 tonnes.
Ensure remunerative prices for farmers, strengthen MSP implementation and reduce distress sales while keeping consumer prices stable.
Key: Launched in September 2018, PM-AASHA brings together four instruments - the Price Support Scheme, the Price Stabilization Fund, the Price Deficiency Payment Scheme and the Market Intervention Scheme. Under PSS, the government procures pulses, oilseeds and copra at MSP when market prices fall below MSP during the peak harvesting period, on the request of the concerned State or UT government - which is exactly the route this Madhya Pradesh moong procurement took. Procurement is from pre-registered farmers with valid land records, at prescribed Fair Average Quality standards. The allocation for PM-AASHA in 2026-27 is Rs 7,200 crore.
Reduce India's import dependence in pulses by raising area, production and yield, and by assuring procurement.
Key: Approved by the Union Cabinet for 2025-26 to 2030-31 with an outlay of Rs 11,440 crore. NAFED and NCCF are to undertake 100 per cent procurement of tur, urad and masoor at MSP for four years from farmers who register with them, under the Price Support Scheme of PM-AASHA. By 2030-31 the Mission targets 310 lakh hectares under pulses, production of 350 lakh tonnes and yield of 1,130 kg per hectare.
Provide crop insurance against losses from natural calamities, pests and diseases, with a low uniform farmer premium.
Key: Launched in 2016 as a Central Sector Scheme. Yield-based claims rest on yield assessment, historically through Crop Cutting Experiments and increasingly through technology-based models - the trade-off discussed in this review, where the Centre recommended reintroducing CCEs for ground-truthing and recalibration in a blended approach.
Insure farmers against adverse weather parameters - rainfall, temperature, wind and humidity - rather than against measured yield loss.
Key: RWBCIS was introduced in 2016 alongside PMFBY. It pays out on a weather index, so it depends entirely on dense, trustworthy weather data. That is supplied by WINDS - the Weather Information Network Data Systems - which expands the network of Automatic Weather Stations and Automatic Rain Gauges to collect hyper-local data at block and Gram Panchayat level, integrated into a national database in coordination with the India Meteorological Department. Madhya Pradesh's WINDS rollout is still pending, which is why officials noted that implementing RWBCIS effectively would be difficult without it.
Apex cooperative for agricultural marketing and a central nodal agency for MSP procurement of pulses, oilseeds and copra under the Price Support Scheme. Established on 2 October 1958 and registered under multi-state cooperative societies law; it has functioned under the Ministry of Cooperation since 2021.
Apex consumer cooperative federation and the other central nodal agency for MSP procurement and for market intervention to cool retail prices. Registered in October 1965 under multi-state cooperative societies law.
The advisory body that recommends Minimum Support Prices; its recommendations are approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs. For Kharif Marketing Season 2026-27 the CCEA approved higher MSPs for 14 kharif crops, with moong at Rs 8,780 per quintal.
The national weather agency in coordination with which WINDS data from Automatic Weather Stations and Automatic Rain Gauges is integrated into a national database - the backbone of weather-index insurance under RWBCIS.
| Aspect | PMFBY (yield-based) | RWBCIS (weather index-based) |
|---|---|---|
| What triggers a claim | Shortfall in measured yield against a threshold yield | Deviation of a weather parameter from a notified index |
| Weather parameters covered | Not directly; loss is measured through yield | Rainfall, temperature, wind, humidity and similar parameters |
| How loss is assessed | Crop Cutting Experiments and technology-based yield models | Automatic Weather Stations and Automatic Rain Gauges reporting against the index |
| Key data dependency | Adequate and correctly conducted CCEs, plus calibrated models | A dense weather station network - hence WINDS |
| Year introduced | 2016 | 2016 |
| Settlement speed | Slower, since yield must be measured after harvest | Faster, since the index reading itself settles the claim |
A Crop Cutting Experiment is exactly what its name says: a randomly located plot of a standard size is harvested under supervision and the produce weighed, giving a directly measured yield for that area. It is slow, labour-intensive and needs thousands of experiments per season, which is why states have moved to technology-based yield estimation using satellite imagery, weather data and models. But a model is only as good as the observations it was trained and calibrated on, and yields drift as varieties, sowing dates and practices change. Ground-truthing means periodically checking the model's output against directly measured reality and recalibrating where the two diverge. That is the Centre's argument in this review for reintroducing CCEs alongside technology-based assessment in Madhya Pradesh - not to reverse the shift to technology, but to keep the models honest. The blended approach is the standard answer wherever an automated estimate carries money: keep a sample of manual measurement as the reference against which the automation is checked.
Simple Analogy: A digital weighing scale is faster than a balance and a set of standard weights - but you still put the standard weights on it occasionally to check it has not drifted.
Summer moong procurement of this scale sits inside the larger push for self-reliance in pulses, where India has historically been a net importer despite being the world's largest producer and consumer.
MSP is effective only where procurement actually happens; the standard critique is that it is concentrated in a few crops and states, which makes a large pulses procurement in Madhya Pradesh a useful counter-example to cite.
NAFED and NCCF are multi-state cooperatives acting as instruments of state price policy - a good illustration for questions on the Ministry of Cooperation, created in 2021, and on cooperative federalism in markets.
WINDS, technology-based yield assessment and the debate over Crop Cutting Experiments show the general problem of automating a measurement on which entitlements depend.
The pending WINDS rollout and the unfinalised RWBCIS term sheet illustrate how a central scheme's outcomes depend on state-level administrative steps.
GS Paper 3 > Economy > Agriculture, MSP and Farm Subsidies
General Awareness > Government Schemes and Agriculture
General Awareness > Agriculture Finance and Priority Sector
General Awareness > Current Affairs
MSP, PM-AASHA and crop insurance are asked almost every year across UPSC, SSC and banking general awareness.
The PM-AASHA component under which the Centre procures pulses, oilseeds and copra at MSP on a State's request when market prices fall below MSP during peak harvest.
The prescribed quality standard produce must meet to be accepted in MSP procurement.
Weather Information Network Data Systems - the expanded network of Automatic Weather Stations and Automatic Rain Gauges collecting block and Gram Panchayat level weather data, integrated with IMD, on which weather-index insurance depends.
A supervised harvest of a randomly chosen standard-size plot, weighed to give a directly measured yield - the ground truth against which technology-based yield models are calibrated.
Restructured Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme, introduced in 2016, which pays out on deviations in weather parameters rather than on measured yield loss.