Focus: GS II- Government policies and Interventions
Why in News?
Recently, the Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare launched the Platform of Platforms (PoP) under the National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) on the side-lines of the State Agriculture and Horticulture Ministers’ Conference in Bengaluru, Karnataka.
About Platform of Platforms (PoP):
- e-NAM integrates the platform of Service Providers as “Platform of Platforms” which includes:
- Composite Service Providers (Service Providers who provide holistic services for trading of agricultural produce including quality analysis, trading, payment systems and logistics)
- Logistics Service Provider, Quality Assurance Service Provider, Cleaning, Grading, Sorting & Packaging Service Provider, Warehousing Facility Service Provider, Agricultural Input Service Provider, Technology Enabled Finance & Insurance Service Provider
- Information Dissemination Portal (Advisory Services, crop forecasting, weather updates, capacity building for farmers etc.)
- Other platforms (e-commerce, international agri-business platforms, barter, private market platforms etc.).
Benefits of PoP
- This will increase farmers’ digital access to multiple markets, buyers and service providers and bring transparency in business transactions with the aim of improving price search mechanism and quality commensurate price realisation.
- The PoP will create a digital ecosystem, which will benefit from the expertise of different platforms in different segments of the agricultural value chain.
- 41 service providers from different platforms are covered under POP facilitating various value chain services like trading, quality checks, warehousing, fintech, market information, transportation etc.
- It enables farmers, FPOs, traders and other stakeholders to access a wide variety of goods and services across the agricultural value chain through a single window, thereby giving more options to the stakeholders.
- Farmers will be facilitated to sell the produce outside their state borders.
- The inclusion of various service providers not only adds to the value of the e-NAM platform, but also gives the users of the platform options to avail services from different service providers.
- Moreover, while selecting a good quality Goods/Service Provider, it saves the time and labour of the stakeholders.
About e-NAM
- e-NAM was an innovative initiative in agricultural marketing to enhance farmers accessibility digitally to multiple number of markets & buyers and to bring transparency in trade transactions with the intent to improve price discovery mechanism, quality commensurate price realization and also to develop the concept of One Nation One Market for agriculture produce.
- Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) is the lead agency for implementing e-NAM under the aegis of Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Government of India.
- e-NAM networks the existing APMC mandis to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities with a vision to promote uniformity in agriculture marketing by streamlining of procedures across the integrated markets, removing information asymmetry between buyers and sellers and promoting real time price discovery based on actual demand and supply.
- This online platform will prove to be a giant leap in reforming the agriculture market in India.
- Farmers are free to register on e-NAM portal and they are uploading their produce for sale online to the traders across all e-NAM mandis and traders can bid for the lots available for sale on e-NAM from any location.
- We have more than 1.66 crore farmers and 1.28 Lakh traders registered on e-NAM platform.
Benefits of e-NAM
- e-NAM would help traders to find and arrange timely movement of produces from mandi to various other locations.
- With this interface, Traders would be able to access more than 7.76 lakh trucks through eNAM Platform.
- This intervention brings immense benefits to our farmers in augmenting their incomes by enabling them to realize competitive & remunerative prices in a transparent manner without incurring additional costs.
- Quality assaying testing facilities is being provided in e-NAM mandis which helps famers in getting prices commensurate with quality of their produce.
- Electronic weighing scales have been provided to accurately weigh the commodities of farmers after bidding on e-NAM platform to bring transparency in weighing, Payment to farmers by traders now can be done through mobile phone using BHIM payment facility.
