(GIST OF KURUKSHETRA) Rural Marketing: Concepts and Opportunities

[September-2021]

Rural Marketing: Concepts and Opportunities

Introduction:

The Government of Indio has been trying to reform the agriculture marketing system so as to facilitate farmers in selling their produce at a better price. All these policies and programmes are being supported by higher budgetary allocations, non-budgetary financial resources by way of creating corpus funds, market reforms, Agri-Export Policy, promotion of FPOs and creation of agricultural marketing infrastructure.
In order to promote agriculture marketing infrastructure and Integrated Value Chains, 9753 marketing infrastructure projects have been created and more are on the anvil.

The objectives of Integrated Scheme for Agricultural Marketing (ISAM) are as under:

To promote creation of agricultural marketing infrastructure by providing backend subsidy support to state, cooperative and private sector investments.
To promote creation of scientific storage capacity and to promote pledge financing to increase farmers’ income.
To promote Integrated Value Chains (confined up to the stage of primary processing only) to provide vertical integration of farmers with primary processors.
To use ICT as a vehicle of extension to sensitise and orient farmers to respond to new challenges in agricultural marketing.
To establish a nation-wide information network system for speedy collection and dissemination of market information and data on arrivals and prices for its efficient and timely utilisation by farmers and other stake holders.
To support framing of grade standards and quality certification of agricultural commodities
to help farmers get better and remunerative prices for their graded produce.
To catalyse private investment in setting up of agribusiness projects and thereby provide assured market to producers and strengthen backward linkages of agri-business projects with producers and their groups.
To undertake and promote training, research, education, extension and consultancy in the agri marketing sector.
To establish a National Unified Agricultural market through e-NAM.

Various facilities are provided to the farmers in selling agricultural produce in e-NAM mandis in the country, some of which are as follows:

Farmers are free to register without any cost on e-NAM platform.
Integration with AGMARKNET platform Farmer can access the prevailing commodity prices & arrival information of e-NAM mandi as well as non e-NAM mandi on e-NAM mobile app prior to even going to the mandi.
The infrastructure created for e-NAM is used to provide free of cost quality assaying facilities to farmers for trading of their agriculture produce for facilitating quality based price discovery.
e-NAM mobile app facilitates direct online payment by buyers to the bank account of
the farmers in a transparent, speedy and safe manner. e-NAM transactions can be
settled through different available modes of payment outside e-NAM such as through cash payment, cheque payment, Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS)/ National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT), Debit Card, Internet Banking, etc., in addition to that through e-payment facility available through e-NAM.
Under the scheme, various training and awareness programmes are conducted free of cost for farmers for successful implementation of e-NAM. FPO trading module has been launched whereby FPOs can trade their produce from their collection center/ premise without bringing the produce to APMC. Warehouse based trading module is provided in e-NAM to facilitate trade from warehouses based on e-NWR.
Further the e-NAM platform is made inter operable with Rashtriya e Market Services Private Limited (ReMS) platform of government of Karnataka thereby increasing their market access.
GPS based e-NAM Mandi Locator: Farmers/Sellers can locate their nearby e-NAM mandi using GPS based mandi locator feature through e-NAM mobile app.
e-NAM portal is available in English and 11 Indian languages to facilitate farmers to use e-NAM in the language of their choice.