The Union Minister Radha Mohan Singh has said the Government is working on a concrete plan to link the farmers with markets. He said so while addressing the 5th International Convention on “Changing Dynamics of Commodities Market” in Delhi on Saturday.
Singh sounded confident that this will help farmers’ participation in the trading of food grains. Forward Trading is an index of predictive pricing and as a result both the buyer and seller can plan their futures trading. This will help farmers plan their crop planting and also do away with the role of middlemen, Singh said.
The Minister said marketing in farm produce is carried out through State Government designated 6,746 Mandis spread across the country. He said the Government is leveraging the APMC Mandis and at the same time amend the Marketing laws to facilitate setting up of Mandis by the private sector.
Lauding the role being played by e-NAM the Minister said it offers an online commodities trading platform that helps the farmer fetch optimum price for his farm produce and the money is also credited directly to his account. He said a total of 277 Mandis spread across 12 States have been linked on the e-NAM portal and 585 Mandis will board the platform by the next year.
“India is not only self-sufficient in agricultural production but also exports food grains and the Agricultural Growth has more than doubled from 2% to 4.4%. In the 2017-18 Budget the funding provision for Rural, Agricultural and Allied sectors has jumped 24% to Rs.1,87,223 crores”, Minister patted himself on the back.