The central government agency, set up in 1965 under the Food Corporations Act 1964, that buys foodgrains from farmers at minimum support prices, stores them as buffer stocks, moves them across the country and releases them for the Public Distribution System and open-market sales.
Deep-dive lesson:MSP, Procurement, Buffer Stocks and the PDS. This page is a quick reference that connects the term across subjects; read the lesson for the full treatment.
In the early 1960s India was living from ship to mouth, dependent on food aid and facing sharp price swings. The government decided it needed its own grain-handling agency to support farmers with assured prices and to protect consumers from shortages. The Foodgrains Prices Committee chaired by L. K. Jha recommended such a body, and the Food Corporation of India was created in January 1965, alongside the Agricultural Prices Commission. Its first office opened in Thanjavur, the rice bowl of Tamil Nadu.
Over the following decades the FCI became the backbone of the Green Revolution's price support and of the food security system. It built a network of warehouses, rail rakes and depots that moves grain from surplus states in the north-west and parts of central and southern India to deficit states in the east and north-east. This page looks at the FCI as an operating organisation, with a focus on its finances and logistics, leaving the wider debate on MSP to the main lesson.
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