Doubling farmers’ income through digital marketing

Abstract

India is largely an agrarian economy. While the contribution of agriculture and its allied sectors to the GDP is 16 percent, nearly 58 percent of the workforce of the country is employed in agriculture. Eighty-five percent of the farmers in the country are small and marginal farmers with a landholding of 1-2 acres. They have very limited or no access to markets to sell their produce. This has resulted in a situation where, on the one hand, farmers do not receive adequate compensation for their produce, on the other, consumers are facing ever-rising inflation concerning their food basket. Agitations by farmers (JuneJuly 2017) in certain parts of the country demanding the implementation of the M. S. Swaminathan Commission’s recommendations (one of them being that the Minimum Statutory Price to be fixed by the government should be 50% plus the cost of production) exemplify neglect of post-harvest management of agriculture. Agricultural marketing has so far been regulated by the States as per their Agricultural Produce Marketing and Regulation Acts. The National Agriculture Market (NAM) is one of the various initiatives undertaken by the Government of India to provide remunerative prices to farmers. NAM is a “virtual” market that will harness the physical infrastructure of the APMCs at the back end. The eNAM portal will thus enable the creation of a national agricultural market with uniform standards and will also provide a single platform for clarifying all issues about the working of APMCs. By facilitating online bidding, the portal will encourage competition among traders and fetch higher income for the farmers. Thus, real-time price discovery in a transparent manner will be achieved. This descriptive paper is an attempt to study the efficacy of the e-NAM in bringing about a second green revolution