A widespread concern for farmers in India is that they get only a fraction of the rupee that a consumer spends on food. But so far there has been virtually no systematic effort to measure the share of a rupee a consumer spends on all food that accrues to the farmer. Using the supply-use tables that map linkages and transactions between the different sectors in the economy, we use a technique called the “Food Dollar series” to trace how much of a rupee spent on food by consumers goes to the farm for the period 2011-12 to 2023-24. We estimate this for both food consumed at home and away from home.

When a consumer spends a rupee on food at home, as much as 57.8 per cent accrued to the farm in 2023-24 and just 8.4 per cent of food expenditures away from home. Three issues are worth highlighting. First, this difference between the farm share for food consumed at and away from home is expected. Food consumed away from home passes through longer chains, with restaurant preparation,........

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