Before a single seed goes into the ground for the coming rabi season, the Union Cabinet has moved to reset the price floor — and for farmers in Rajasthan's Marwar belt, the numbers are hard to ignore. Union Culture and Tourism Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat on Wednesday, 30 September 2026, welcomed the Cabinet's approval of Minimum Support Price hikes across six rabi crops for the 2027–28 marketing season, calling it a decisive step toward making farming more rewarding for India's cultivators.

Six crops, six hikes — and one that towers above the rest

The Cabinet approved increases across the full basket of notified rabi crops. Wheat — the season's anchor crop — gets a hike of ₹25 per quintal. Barley rises by ₹136, gram (chana) by ₹83, and lentil (masoor) by ₹390 per quintal. Two oilseeds lead the pack: mustard (sarson) climbs by ₹413 per quintal, while safflower (kusum) records the single largest jump of the lot — ₹675 per quintal.

That safflower figure is the headline number. It signals a deliberate push to shore up oilseed cultivation at a time when domestic edible-oil import dependence remains a live policy concern. The government's logic is straightforward: if the floor price is attractive enough, acreage follows.

Why Marwar farmers are watching the mustard and wheat lines closely

Shekhawat, the Lok Sabha MP from Jodhpur, was pointed about the regional dividend. Rajasthan's Marwar districts are among the country's most significant producers of both wheat and mustard — two crops that together define the rabi calendar in the region. A combined boost of ₹25 on wheat and ₹413 on mustard translates directly into improved realisation per quintal at the mandi gate.

In his post, Shekhawat described the hike as honouring the hard work of farmers — 'kisanon ke parishram ka samman' (respect for the toil of farmers) — and framed it as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's sustained effort to make agriculture more profitable and empowering.

MSP as a policy instrument: what the mechanism actually does

The Minimum Support Price is a government-declared floor price for notified crops. When market prices fall below the MSP, procurement agencies — chiefly the Food Corporation of India and state-level bodies — step in to buy at the declared rate, preventing distress sales. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, acting on recommendations from the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), approves revisions ahead of each sowing window so farmers can factor the price signal into planting decisions.

Since 2014, the central government has maintained a policy of year-on-year MSP increases for rabi crops, and a 2015–16 budget commitment set a benchmark of MSP at least 50 percent above the cost of production for notified crops — a benchmark that successive revisions have referenced.

The real test, as always, will come when the marketing season opens: whether procurement machinery moves fast enough and payment reaches farmers on time. Announcement and delivery are two different harvests.