Glossary — plain words for Indian agriculture

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Agriculture policy hides behind acronyms. This is the plain-English key to every term on the site — what it means, and why it matters here. Search it, or link straight to any entry.

ಕನ್ನಡ note · Kannada headwords are shown where the local usage is well-established. Full Kannada definitions are being prepared with a human translator — agricultural terms have settled local meanings that machine translation gets subtly wrong.

43 of 43 terms

A2+FL: A cost concept: paid-out costs (seed, fertiliser, fuel…) plus the imputed value of family labour. One basis for MSP.
AGMARK: India's certification mark for agricultural produce quality, run by the Directorate of Marketing & Inspection.
AgriStack: India's digital public infrastructure for agriculture — a Farmer ID, a crop registry and geo-referenced land, as APIs.
Agro-climatic zone: A region grouped by soil, rainfall and temperature so crops and advice can be matched to local conditions.
APMC: Agricultural Produce Market Committee — the statutory body that runs a regulated wholesale market (mandi).
Arbitrage: Profiting from the same goods costing different amounts in two markets — here, the price gap between mandis minus transport.
Assaying: Testing produce for quality (moisture, foreign matter, grade) so it can be priced and traded on trust — including remotely.
Buffer stock: Grain the state holds to stabilise prices and ensure food security — released when prices spike, built when they fall.
C2: A fuller cost concept: A2+FL plus rent and interest on owned land and capital. The Swaminathan 'C2+50%' benchmark uses this.
CACP: Commission for Agricultural Costs & Prices — the body that recommends MSPs to the government using cost data.
Commission agent (dalal): A licensed middleman in the mandi who auctions a farmer's lot to buyers and takes a percentage commission.
Crop-cutting experiment: The traditional method of measuring yield by harvesting and weighing crop from sample plots — slow, now being augmented by satellites.
CROPIC: 'Collection of Real-time Observations & Photos of Crops' — smartphone/AI crop monitoring for insurance and advisories.
DBT: Direct Benefit Transfer — paying subsidies and support straight into a beneficiary's bank account.
Digital Crop Survey: A geo-tagged, season-by-season survey of what is actually growing in each field, replacing manual area estimates.
Drip / fertigation: Delivering water (and dissolved nutrients) drop by drop to the root zone — the highest water-use efficiency.
e-NAM: National Agriculture Market — an online trading platform networking mandis across states into one market.
eNWR / WDRA: Electronic Negotiable Warehouse Receipt, regulated by the WDRA — a digital proof of stored goods that can be pledged for credit.
Farmer ID: A unique digital identity for a farmer ('Kisan ki Pehchaan'), built on land records — the deck's Kisan Card, realised.
FPO: Farmer Producer Organisation — a collective that lets small farmers aggregate inputs, produce and bargaining power.
Gale–Shapley / stable matching: An algorithm that pairs two sides (here, farmers and crop plans) so no pair would both prefer to switch — the basis of Agri-Match.
Gate entry: The record made when a farmer's produce enters a market yard — the first step that should generate a unique lot ID.
KCC: Kisan Credit Card — subsidised crop credit, usually secured against a land title (which excludes the title-less).
Kharif: The monsoon cropping season (sown ~June, harvested ~autumn) — groundnut, ragi, maize, paddy.
Krishi-DSS: Krishi Decision Support System — a geospatial platform pooling weather, soil, crop and water data for planning.
Lot: A single consignment of produce brought by a farmer, auctioned as one unit in the mandi.
Mandi: A regulated wholesale agricultural market where farmers sell produce, usually through licensed traders and commission agents.
Micronutrient: Nutrients needed in small amounts (zinc, boron, iron…) whose deficiency still sharply limits yield.
Modal price: The most frequently occurring (most common) price for a commodity in a market on a given day — the headline mandi rate.
MSP: Minimum Support Price — the floor price the government announces for certain crops to assure farmers a baseline return.
NDVI: Normalised Difference Vegetation Index — a satellite measure of crop greenness/health over time.
NFSA / PDS / ONORC: Food-security law, the Public Distribution System that delivers subsidised grain, and 'One Nation One Ration Card' portability.
NPK: Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium — the three primary plant nutrients a soil test measures and fertiliser supplies.
PM-KISAN: An income-support scheme paying eligible farmer families a fixed sum a year via direct benefit transfer.
PMFBY: Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana — the national crop-insurance scheme, increasingly settled using satellite data.
Protective irrigation: Limited, supplemental watering to save a rainfed crop through a dry spell — not full irrigation.
Rabi: The winter cropping season (sown ~October, harvested ~spring) — wheat, gram, jowar.
Rainfed: Farming that depends on rain alone, with no assured irrigation — most of the Central Dry Zone.
Soil Health Card: A periodic report of a field's nutrient status (N, P, K, pH, micronutrients) with crop-wise fertiliser advice.
VB-GRaM-G: Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar & Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) — the rural job-guarantee replacing MGNREGA from 1 July 2026 (100 → 125 days).
Warehouse receipt: A document showing goods are in a warehouse; lets a farmer borrow against stored grain and wait for a better price instead of selling distressed.
WINDS: Weather Information Network Data Systems — a dense network of automatic weather stations and rain gauges for granular weather data.
YES-TECH: A technology framework using remote sensing to estimate crop yields for insurance, reducing reliance on manual surveys.