India, Oct. 11 -- The Centre has readied a policy to expand its procurement programme for farm produce, planning to purchase entire quantities of three key pulses varieties without any cap, in line with a similar policy for cereals, the top bureaucrat in the agriculture ministry said on Friday.

The move aims at nudging farmers away from growing surplus food grains, which itself is the result of unlimited federal purchases of cereals at minimum support prices, or MSPs, which offer growers an assured market. An MSP is a floor rate meant to avoid distress sales, but it has been mostly effective for cereals.

The expansion of state-backed procurement comes amid a new national campaign for self-sufficiency. Buffeted by the US's steep 50% tari...