NABARD Assistant Manager Grade A (RDBS) · India · National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development
Original practice questions written to the published syllabus · not past papersHow farm produce moves from field to consumer, who takes what share, how markets are regulated and how prices behave over seasons and places.
In the exams: agricultural master's entrance examinations, agricultural economics and agribusiness (heavy); agricultural economics PhD entrance and fellowship examinations, marketing and prices (heavy); agricultural scientist eligibility tests (heavy); agricultural development bank officer recruitment and agricultural field officer recruitment in banking (present)
How our questions for NABARD Assistant Manager Grade A spread across the units of Agricultural Marketing & Price Analysis. Difficulty: 19 easy, 27 medium, 3 hard.
| Agricultural exports | 6 | |
| Processing, storage and warehousing | 4 | |
| Marketing finance | 4 | |
| Seasonal and spatial price variation | 4 | |
| Buffer stocks and price stabilisation | 4 | |
| Marketing institutions | 3 | |
| Regulated markets and marketing boards | 3 | |
| Price commissions and parastatal marketing agencies | 3 | |
| Commodity-wise marketing: grains, pulses, fruits and vegetables, livestock | 3 | |
| Agricultural price policy | 3 | |
| IT in agricultural marketing and electronic trading platforms | 3 | |
| Marketable and marketed surplus | 2 | |
| Marketing channels and price spread | 2 | |
| Cooperative marketing | 2 | |
| Marketing in a developing economy | 1 | |
| Classification of markets | 1 | |
| Marketing functions | 1 |
Choose an answer, then open the working. Each explanation says why the right answer is right and why the others are not.
A farmer harvests 6,000 kg of wheat. Family consumption needs 1,200 kg, seed 300 kg, cattle feed 200 kg, payments in kind to labour 400 kg and wastage 100 kg. What is the marketable surplus?
D. 3,800 kg
Marketable surplus = production - all retentions = 60 - (12+3+2+4+1) = 60 - 22 = 3,800 kg. Subtracting only family consumption (4,800 kg) ignores seed, feed, payments in kind and wastage. 4,500 kg subtracts only family consumption and seed.
Further reading: Acharya and Agarwal, Agricultural Marketing in India
Marketed surplus is likely to be LESS than marketable surplus for:
B. Large farmers who hold stocks expecting higher prices later
Retention by large farmers with storage and holding capacity keeps sales below the surplus. The other three groups tend to sell more than their surplus (distress sale), pushing marketed above marketable surplus.
A farmer receives 1800 currency units per 100 kg for a product for which consumers pay the equivalent of 2400 currency units per 100 kg. What is the producer's share in the consumer's money?
A. 75%
Producer's share = farmer's price / consumer price x 100 = 1800/2400 x 100 = 75%. 25% is the share of the price spread, and 33.3% wrongly expresses the spread as a percentage of the farm price. 133.3% inverts the ratio (2400/1800).
Further reading: Acharya and Agarwal, Agricultural Marketing in India
In a regulated market, which malpractice does open auction or tender sale mainly aim to stop?
C. Secret 'under-the-cloth' price settlement between commission agent and buyer
Secret hand signals under a cloth hid the price from the farmer. Open auction makes bids visible. Grading, correct weighing and prompt payment are reforms, not malpractices.
Further reading: Acharya and Agarwal, Agricultural Marketing in India
Robert Bates (Markets and States in Tropical Africa, 1981) criticised African marketing boards mainly because they:
C. Paid producers well below export prices, taxing farmers to fund the state
Bates showed that boards bought at low fixed producer prices and sold at world prices, using the margin to fund governments and urban constituencies, which depressed farm output. They were state bodies, they paid less, not more, than world prices, and many did stabilise prices within a season.
In the widely taught A1 to C3 cost-of-cultivation ladder, cost A2 equals:
C. Cost A1 plus rent on leased-in land
A2 = A1 + rent paid for leased-in land. Adding family labour to A2 gives A2+FL; B1 plus rental value of owned land is part of B2; C2* plus 10% is C3.
Further reading: CACP cost concepts
Which of these is a state grain-reserve or procurement parastatal?
C. Indonesia's Bulog
Bulog procures, stores and releases rice for Indonesia's government, like Kenya's National Cereals and Produce Board or India's Food Corporation. The Grains Council is an intergovernmental forum, Codex sets food standards, and the Chicago Board of Trade is a private exchange.
Which feature most often explains the success of dairy cooperatives in countries such as the Netherlands, New Zealand and India?
C. Control of value-adding processing
Successful dairy cooperatives control processing that adds value and pay members promptly and fairly, which secures loyalty. Price fixing and bans on competitors are not the source of their success.
Which of these trading systems for physical farm produce was launched in the 2010s?
C. India's e-NAM, launched in 2016 to link regulated yards
e-NAM began in 2016 as an electronic platform linking existing regulated market yards. The Chicago Board of Trade dates from 1848, Dojima from the 18th century and Dutch clock auctions from the early 20th century.
Frequent export bans and minimum export prices imposed when domestic prices rise are criticised mainly because they:
C. Undermine reliability and amplify world spikes
Such restrictions lower domestic prices at farmers' expense and, when several exporters act together, push world prices higher, as in 2007-08.
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