MP Suspends Fertiliser E-Token System, Hikes Moong Procurement to 60% After Farmer Protests

A farmer protest that originated in Narmadapuram on July 27 and arrived at the Madhya Pradesh chief minister's residence in Bhopal the following day has extracted two significant concessions from the state government. First, the Madhya Pradesh administration agreed to raise its procurement of summer moong under MSP from 25 per cent of production to 60 per cent — a move that could require the state to purchase nearly 11 lakh tonnes. Second, it suspended the controversial e-token system for distributing subsidised fertilisers, primarily urea and DAP, pending a committee review.

Farmer leader Kedar Sirohi, who led the protest, noted that the government also revised the per-acre moong selling limit upward — from 1.2 quintals per acre to 3 quintals per acre. With these assurances in hand, agitating farmers called off their protest. State Agriculture Minister Aidal Singh Kansana confirmed that a committee would be constituted to examine grievances around the e-token framework and recommend changes before any fresh rollout.

Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's letter to Chief Minister Mohan Yadav, dated July 29, laid out a damning arithmetic. The Centre had already cleared procurement of up to 4.55 lakh tonnes of summer moong for Madhya Pradesh under the Price Support Scheme — representing 87 per cent of the total quantity approved nationally under PM-AASHA. Despite this, the state had managed to procure only 60,000 tonnes.

Chouhan clarified the Centre's position on the MSP procurement ceiling: under PM-AASHA guidelines, only 25 per cent of production is eligible for MSP-based purchase by approved central nodal agencies, while any procurement beyond that threshold becomes the exclusive responsibility of the state government. Madhya Pradesh is the country's largest moong-producing state, contributing over 40 per cent of national output. In 2025-26, total moong production in the country stood at 44.92 lakh tonnes, of which MP accounted for 18.39 lakh tonnes — with 18.18 lakh tonnes from the summer season alone.

The procurement shortfall has reignited a long-running debate about accountability in India's oilseed and pulse price-support architecture. Under PM-AASHA, Nafed and NCCF are the Centre-designated nodal agencies for MSP operations — yet the framework creates ambiguity about who bears responsibility when procurement targets are missed.

A former agriculture secretary of Madhya Pradesh argued that states cannot be held solely responsible for implementation failures. "Let the Centre nominate state agencies independently and hold them accountable for any delay or non-procurement," the former official said, calling for a clearer chain of accountability. The Centre's own guidelines cap direct MSP procurement at 25 per cent of production, pushing any additional burden onto state budgets — a design choice that critics say is misaligned with states like MP, where moong output is both large and highly concentrated in a single season.

The e-token mechanism for fertiliser distribution had been positioned by the state's e-Vikas portal as a tool to "ensure that fertiliser supply aligns with actual requirements, thereby fostering efficiency, transparency, and accountability." Farmers were required to register with Aadhaar or other approved identity documents, declare land records, and pre-book a date-and-time slot to collect urea or DAP from cooperative societies.

In practice, farmers found the system inflexible and coercive. Sirohi said farmers were being denied the fertiliser of their choice — when they sought DAP, they were offered SSP, and vice versa — and that urea purchases were being bundled with other products under the guise of promoting balanced nutrient use. Industry opinion on the suspension is split: a micronutrient manufacturer supported the rollback, while a senior official at a leading fertiliser company said the system "was supposed to be stopped." The state minister has now formed a committee to assess practical difficulties and suggest improvements before any reimplementation.

Experts who observed the protest say the episode illustrates the political and operational risks of introducing digital or procedural reforms in agriculture without adequate farmer consultation. The e-token system, whatever its design merits, collapsed at its first large-scale stress test — and the moong procurement shortfall exposes a structural mismatch between Centre-approved quotas and on-ground state capacity.

If Madhya Pradesh does indeed move to procure 60 per cent of its summer moong, the volume involved — potentially close to 11 lakh tonnes — will test both state agency logistics and the bandwidth of Nafed and NCCF. The outcome will also influence price discovery for moong across India, given MP's dominant share of national supply. Policymakers designing the next iteration of PM-AASHA, or any successor scheme, will need to address the agency-accountability gap that this episode has so visibly exposed.