Country needs food policy that reacts to market dynamics: Manmohan Singh

Prime minister Manmohan Singh today said the country needs an agile food policy, under which procurement and distribution are alive to market reality and provide stability in prices.

"We need to move towards an agile food procurement and distribution policy that can respond to the market quickly so that prices do not fall to the extent of hurting the farmers or rise to the extent of hurting the consumers," he said at a book release function in New Delhi.

Food inflation has been hovering over 15% for two weeks now and the country is yet to put in a place a National Food Security law that will ensure cheaper food to the poor.

Singh was speaking after releasing a book on "From Green to Evergreen Revolution - Indian Agriculture : Performance and Challenges" written by eminent agricultural scientist MS Swaminathan.

Singh also stressed on the need to adopt a holistic approach in discussing issues related to national food security.

The prime minister noted that although the increase in the minimum support price (MSP) to farmers have resulted in higher procurement of foodgrains, this has posed a "serious challenge" to the foodgrain storage infrastructure.

He said the issues of production and productivity of food crops have come into sharp focus in recent months because of challenges posed by food price inflation.

The prime minister said that the long term average of last 15 years of agricultural growth is no more than 2% and "in the current five years (11th Plan), I am happy to note that we will register a growth rate of close to 3.5% per annum. We could do more and we should do more".