NEW DELHI, 15 February 2022: Physical infrastructure/ facilities under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) have been developed in 1351 village haats and is under development in 1632 number of village haats.
As on 31.03.2020, there are 6845 numbers of Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) markets in the country. In order to provide better farmer - market linkages and fair prices to farmers, in addition to regulated markets, there are other markets also like non-regulated wholesale markets, farmer – consumer markets, purchase centers and private wholesale markets. In addition, Government is promoting to declare warehouses and cold storages as deemed market yards to improve the farmer – market linkages.
Further, Government of India had launched reform linked National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) scheme, a virtual platform integrating physical wholesale mandis/ markets of different States/ Union Territories (UTs) to facilitate online trading of agriculture and horticulture commodities to enable farmers to realize better remunerative prices for their produce. All these contribute towards better marketing efficiency and also better prices to farmers.
So far, based on earlier targets and as per the proposals received from States/ Union Territories (UTs), 1000 mandis of 18 States and 3 UTs have been integrated with e-NAM platform. As on 9th February, 2022, more than 1.72 crore farmers & 2.16 lakh traders have been registered on e-NAM platform. Further agricultural produce trade with a value of Rs. 1.74 lakh crore have so far been recorded on e-NAM platform.
This information was given by the Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Narendra Singh Tomar in a written reply in Rajya Sabha recently.
Image credit:downtoearth.org
