Finding market for farmers’ produce is of top priority for the Modi government, said Union Minister Narendra Singh Tomar in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. Tomar said that more than Rs. 423.23 crores has been released to the States and UTs under e-NAM scheme since 2015.
Many facilities are available to farmers at e-mandis for using e-NAM platform among which the major facilities, said Tomar in the Lower House. Farmers can access the prevailing commodity prices information on e-NAM mobile app even without going to the mandi, he added.
There are also other facilities including facility of pre-registration of lot by farmers for their produce available through mobile app to facilitate quick gate entry of the lot during peak season, facility of quality testing of the produce of the farmers before bidding and facility for the farmers to view the progress of online bid value of their produce through mobile.
The details of final bid rate of commodity of farmer are received through SMS by farmers and the Online payment gateway is available for transfer of bid value directly to bank accounts of farmers, he added.
The facilities provided to farmers in e-NAM mandis are continuously reviewed by the Government. The feedback on the various facilities, such as, quality assaying, e-trading, e-payment etc. is provided to States to improve their functioning.
Three reforms are mandatory for States and Union Territories (UTs) in their respective State Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) Acts for integrating their mandis with National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) platform.
However, Government of Bihar has not proposed any of their market for integration with e-NAM platform. Number of farmers who have sold their produce on e-NAM platform in Madhya Pradesh is about 11 lac.