Market Facilities to Farmers for Agricultural Produces

During the last three years Government has taken/ formulated following agricultural marketing inititatives/ schemes to facilitate farmers:-

1. 1. 1. Government of India has launched the Central Sector Scheme for “Formation and Promotion of 10,000 Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs)” in the year 2020 with the main focus on leveraging economies of scale in production and marketing and on increasing the bargaining capacity of the farmers for better productivity and remunerative prices, thus helping in reduction of cost of production and increase in farmers’ income. This will further reduce the dependency of farmers’ on local traders and middlemen.
      2. To expand marketing facilities for the farmers/ FPOs and to facilitate them to receive competitive and remunerative prices, Government had integrated 1000 e-NAM mandis in the country. e-NAM permits farmers’ to sell their produce through competitive online transparent bidding system without going through the commission agents.
      3. FPO trading module has been launched in National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) platform to facilitate FPOs to trade their agricultural produce from their collection centres without bringing the produce to Agricultural Produce Market Committee markets. Warehouse based trading module was also launched in e-NAM platform to enable farmers to sell their produce from WDRA registered warehouses notified as deemed market.
      4. The Government of India had launched the Kisan Rath Mobile App on 17.04.2020 to address the issue of transportation of agricultural produce of farmers and other stakeholders.
      5. Government had approved a new central sector scheme viz., Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF) of Rs. 1,00,000 Crore to provide a medium-long term loan facility for post-harvest market infrastructure including warehousing facility and community farming assets through interest subvention and financial support. In order to strengthen the infrastructure in the mandis, Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs) have been recognized as one of the eligible entities under AIF.
      6. Government is actively engaged in strengthening of agriculture market infrastructure through various schemes such as Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana – Remunerative Approaches for Agriculture and Allied Sector Rejuvenation (RKVY-RAFTAAR) Scheme, and Agricultural Marketing Infrastructure (AMI) sub-scheme of Integrated Scheme for Agricultural Marketing (ISAM).

This information was given by Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Shri Narendra Singh Tomar in a written reply in Rajya Sabha today.

****

APS/IA/JK