NEW DELHI, 3 April 2020: In order to make usage of agriculture market convenient, Indian agriculture and farmers welfare ministry has added two new features on the electronic national agriculture market (e-NAM) platform so as to make it more convenient for growers to sell their produce at warehouses & collection centres established by farmer producer organizations (FPOs).
The move is aimed at decongesting mandis as well as maintaining supply chains of vegetables and fruits.
The Indian minister of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare, Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Narendra Singh Tomar has launched new features of National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) Platform to strengthen agriculture marketing by farmers which will reduce their need to physically come to wholesale mandis for selling their harvested produce, at a time when there is critical need to decongest mandis to effectively fight against COVID-19.
These software modules are namely (i) Warehouse based trading module in e-NAM software to facilitate trade from warehouses based on e-NWR (ii) FPO trading module in e-NAM whereby FPOs can trade their produce from their collection center without bringing the produce to APMC.
In addition to facilitate inter-mandi and inter-state trade at this juncture, enhanced version of logistic module has been released whereby aggregators of transport logistic platform have on boarded which helps users to avail trackable transport facilities for transporting their produce.
Speaking on this, Narendra Singh Tomar said, “Already 585 mandis in 16 States and 02 Union Territories have been integrated on e-NAM portal. e-NAM will be soon expanded to cover additional 415 mandis, which will take the total number of e-NAM mandis to 1,000 mandis.”
Further highlighting, he said e-NAM provides for contactless remote bidding and mobile-based any time payment for which traders do not need to either visit mandis or banks for the same. This helps improve social distancing and safety in the APMC markets to fight against COVID-19.
He further added that these new features are being launched today as important steps towards our fight against COVID-19, to help farmers at this juncture to effectively sell their produce at better prices from near their farm gate thus helping them at this time.
The minister said that the mandis play a critical role in maintaining the supply chain of Grains, Fruits & Vegetables. e-NAM is well poised to play a critical role during the period of Covid-19 to decongest mandis while helping the farmers at same time. For this purpose following 03 modules have been launched for enhancing the effectiveness of e-NAM.
Launch of Negotiable Warehouse Receipt (e-NWRs) module in National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) software
a. Warehouse (Registered with WDRA) trading module with payment feature is launched today to enable small & marginal famers to directly trade their stored produce from selected WDRA registered warehouses which are declared deemed market by the State.
b. Farmers will be able to place their produce in WDRA accredited warehouses.
c. Already States of Telangana (14 warehouses) & Andhra Pradesh (23 warehouses) declared designated warehouses in the State as deemed market.
Benefits of eNWRs integration with e-NAM
a. Depositor can save the Logistics expenses and will have better income.
b. Farmers can sell the produce across the Nation to get better Price and at the same time can save himself from hassle of mandi.
c. Farmers will be able to place their produce in WDRA accredited warehouses avail the benefit of pledge loan if required.
d. Price stabilization by matching supply and demand through time and place utility.
FPO trading module
a. FPO trading module is launched today to enable FPOs to upload their produce from their premise/collection centres for bidding. They can upload the picture of the produce and quality parameters from their premises to help distant bidders to visualise the produce before bidding. FPOs have the option for delivery of produce either from their premises or by bringing to mandi premise after successful bidding. This will not only decongest the mandis but also reduce the logistics cost for the FPOs.
b. Facility provided to FPO to upload assaying report / photo of their produce from their premise to enable traders to visualise the produce before bidding.
Benefits
a. This will not only decongest the mandis but also reduce the hassle of FPOs to deal with mandis.
b. This will help FPOs by reducing transaction costs (Transportation) and enhancing their bargaining power.
c. Facilitates FPOs to avail online payment facility with ease of doing business.
Launch of Logistic Module
a. Presently, e-NAM provides a database of individual transporters to the traders. However, as a quantum response to logistic need by traders, provision has been made for linking large logistic aggregator platforms, which will provide choices to users. Traders would be able to use the link to navigate to the logistics provider’s website and select appropriate services. With these additions, more than 3,75,000 number of trucks from large logistic providers would be added for logistic purpose.
Benefits
a. This will help in seamless transportation of agri produce.
b. This will promote inter-State trade under e-NAM by providing online transport facilities for distant buyers.
Tomar further added that these programs will help farmers to sell their produce at remunerative prices near to their farm gate without coming to mandis.
He added further that Mandis have been advised to adopt utmost sanitary and social distancing measures for the safety of farmers and other stakeholders. States are also being encouraged to facilitate direct buying by bulk buyers/processors and big retailers without having to go through mandis to decongest them.
