Farmers go online to sell their produce in lockdown

NEW DELHI : On Saturday, 200 new agricultural markets or mandis were added to the e-Nam e-commerce platform for agricultural produce, almost a fourth of the 785 markets on the platform which was launched in 2016 to benefit farmers, but whose popularity has surged in recent weeks following the coronavirus disease pandemic and the lockdown enforced to combat it.

At least 166000 registered farmers across the country are now selling their produce by transacting from home and praticising social distancing, with nearly half of the country’s 1500 major farm-end commodity markets now going online on e-NAM, agriculture minister Narendra Sing Tomar said.

This is the first time wholesale food markets in large states, such as Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, have joined the digital supply chain. These mandis are the first point of sale for farmers in a delicate supply chain, and will help connect them with more than 100,000 traders, who are also wired in, through the e-NAM mobile app. Wholesale markets, which are usually crowded, could be key hot spots. Farmers on the e-NAM app can strike deals for their harvests remotely by first uploading pictures of their samples and then getting these samples scientifically checked for quality by remote assayers, without having to move entire truck loads to physical markets.

The additional 200 markets integrated into the platform include 11 in Andhra Pradesh, 25 in Gujarat, 16 in Odisha, 94 in Rajasthan, 27 in Tamil Nadu, 25 in UP and two in Karnataka.

“This is the first milestone achieved in the path of integrating 415 new markets across the country. It is for the first time that Karnataka state has been added to the list of e-NAM States,”

Tomar said.

According to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity, the ministry has added two new features in the e-NAM platform last month so that famers can sell their produce without bringing them to physical markets. The first, “FPO option” allows farmer producer organisations to trade on the app from their collection centres. The second, called the “warehouse module”, allows farmers to sell their produce stored in registered warehouses.

“What hold some these e-NAM markets back is that in many places, state governments have not appointed adequate number of food assayers...,” said Anil Sardana, a consultant who worked with the Karnataka to set up a similar state-specific platform.

“It takes a little getting used to,” says farmer Jaspal Singh Nain of Haryana’s Kurukshetra adding: “...sample examiners (responsible for grading quality) are not always available.”