ABSTRACT
In India, like any other developing country, the central problem of food policy is how to reconcile the conflicting objectives of providing low food prices to consumers and remunerative prices to farmers. Maintaining stability in these prices is an equally important objective of food policy. Trade policies that are designed to regulate the volume of trade flows are found to be an effective instrument in imparting stability to domestic prices along with affecting the performance of the marketing system by influencing the average level of prices, intercrop price ratios and the price spread in the domestic market. As the policy reconciles the objectives of growth and equity, it has always occupied an important place in economic and political debates.
