edible oil prices accords ill with its concern for protecting growers' interests. The champions of growers' cause never tire of emphasising the need for ensuring remunerative prices for stepping up production. But they never bother to ask themselves hpw under conditions of chronic shortage producers are unable to realise remunerative prices for their produce. Only gross infrastructural inadequacies and marketing deficiencies can explain the persisting wide gap between what the producer gets and the consumer pays. In an economy of acute shortages, production depends essentially on the timely availability of requisite inputs rather than the prices farmers are able to realise.