Strong efforts are necessary to increase domestic production of maize

03-Jul-2024 08:00 PM

Mumbai. Maize is already being consumed heavily in animal feed, poultry feed and waste manufacturing industry, while now its use in ethanol production has also started increasing rapidly. Maize is also being used heavily for general human food purposes,

while a good amount of this important coarse grain is also exported from the country. To meet the demand on all these fronts, it is very important to increase the domestic production of maize.

It is worth mentioning that in the category of grain crops, maize is the highest producer in India after rice and wheat. Over the years, domestic production of pulses has seen fluctuations, but its demand and consumption has increased regularly.

As a result, the price also increased and reached above the minimum support price. The situation became such that the government had to allow the import of 5 lakh tonnes of maize from abroad under the Tariff Rate Quota (TRQ) system.

The minimum support price (MSP) of maize has been increased to Rs 2225 per quintal for the 2024-25 season, while the domestic market price has gone even higher than this. That MSP is 6.5 percent higher than that of 2023-24. Earlier, it was also increased by 6.52 percent for the 2022-23 season.

The government wants to ensure adequate supply of maize to ethanol companies and a contract was also signed with it for this, but due to the high market price, the government may not get much success in its objective. Maize production will need to be increased by at least 100 lakh tonnes in the next 5 years.