Finding the right policy for edible oil

The strategy mooted by the finance minister to attain atmanirbharta in edible oilseeds like mustard, groundnut, sesame, soybean, and sunflower involves research on high-yielding crop varieties

Achieving self-sufficiency in edible oil has been on the agenda of successive governments at the Centre for decades, but without making much headway in this direction. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also promised in her Interim Budget speech this year to formulate a strategy to achieve “atmanirbharta” (self-reliance) in edible oil. She had, in fact, talked about it in 2019 as well. Yet, the gap in the indigenous production and requirement of edible oil has steadily been widening, increasing the dependence on import, which has grown now to over 60 per cent. While the output of oil has risen annually