Farmers are the only producers who don't get to declare the price of their produce in market. And this is highly unfavourable. When I began doing fieldwork’ in the grain mandis of Madhya Pradesh over a decade ago, farmers, waiting to sell their soybean and wheat, would often start the conversation by asking: “Have you noticed, the farmer is the only producer in the world who can never declare the price of his own produce in the market?” Of course, this was not meant to be a question because even the most unseasoned mandi observer was expected to have figured out this basic fact. But, for farmer after farmer, in villages and markets in Madhya Pradesh and elsewhere in India, it is a statement that always bore repeating because it established what is for them a fundamental condition of market exchange, irrespective of whether the buyer is a private trader or state agency.