The growing prices of edible oils due to high import costs of oilseeds has made the policymaker sit up and come out with a new strategy; henceforward have decided to re-use a Green Revolution-era strategy of distributing free seed packets.
They hope this would shoot up domestic production of oilseeds and reduce the over-reliance on imports. However, experts say that an idea of 1960s vintage may not produce the desired results today.
Union Agriculture Ministry is giving out nearly 800,000 soybean seed mini-kits and 74,000 groundnut mini-kits to farmers in nearly a third of the country’s districts for the Kharif (summer crops) season beginning next month. This step is taken to raise production.
Just like pulses, India relies on imports to meet its edible oil demand. On average, the annual demand for edible oils is about 24 million tonnes. While domestic output varies between 8 and 11 million tonnes, up to 60% of the demand is met through imports. High global prices over the past two months have made cooking oil the priciest item in the household food basket.