Goyal lauds FCI's key role in making India self-sufficient in food

India's self-sufficiency in food, which ensures no citizen in the world's most populous country sleeps hungry, is one of the "greatest achievements in human history", food and consumer affairs minister Piyush Goyal said on Sunday, lauding the role of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) on its 60th founding anniversary.

The corporation, which runs the government's granaries, must keep winning the trust of farmers through transparency in its operations, adopt more digital technologies to achieve high quality and explore ways to keep its expenses under limit, Goyal said. The statutory organisation has been critical to maintaining the country's food security, as it buys millions of tonnes of farm produce from cultivators at federally fixed minimum support prices (MSP), a process known as procurement. It then redistributes the food to 800 million poor people free of cost under the National Food Security Act.

MSP is a floor price to help avoid distress sale by agriculturists.