Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently inaugurated the National Agriculture Market portal (e-NAM), an all new e-platform for agricultural products. This new initiative plans to integrate over five hundred wholesale markets of the country under one single online platform.
The basic aim of this e-platform is to provide farmers a larger and better place to sell their produce. In fact, if everything goes as planned, this online agri-platform would almost double the income of the farmers by the year 2022.
An amendment is required in the APMC Act of the states to register with this platform. As many as twelve states have already made amendments in the Act. Earlier, in July, the Cabinet had approved the setting up of such an online agricultural market with a budget of rupees two hundred crores.
Let’s take a look at a few advantages and features of this agri-market initiative.
- The national agri-market will initially integrate 21 mandis from eight states. The states are Haryana, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.
- As per the current plan of the government, by September two hundred mandis will be integrated in the platform. By the end of March 2018, the remaining one hundred and eighty five mandis will be integrated.
- The e-market will help farmers tackle the volatility they face in selling their produce.
- Currently, farmers can sell their products only at mandis, where they have to pay taxes. Now, with the introduction of the online market, the farmers will have an option to sell their products either in mandis or at the agri-platform or both.
- The platform will help in boosting the incomes as well as the profitability along with moderating the prices.
- The online agri-market will prove to be a more transparent and secure platform for the farmers to sell their produce. The national agri-market will help the farmers to sell their products to the highest bidder.
This initiative taken by the central government is yet to witness the inclusion of sale of fruits and vegetables through the platform. With the introduction of this online platform, the farmers will now have alternatives to choose from for selling their products. The National Agri-market is a little ray of hope for the farmers in these hard times.
This platform will not be instrumental in increasing profitability but will also help farmers to give better accessibility to their agrbuyers. With the current budget of rupees two hundred crores, the initiative will help the government to improve the current state of farmers of the country.
