Mandi amendment difficult to implement: NITI member

The Maharashtra government's decision to amend the APMC Act making it illegal for a trader to purchase any agriculture produce below the government-fixed minimum support price (MSP) from the coming kharif harvest season hasn't found support from several quarters.

NITI Aayog member (agriculture) Ramesh Chand said that prices cannot be enforced if demand-side factors are not supportive of a particular price unless of course traders are

As per the amendment, any trader who fails to purchase farm goods at MSP would attract a jail term of one year or a fine of ~50,000, or both

paid some incentive for doing so. He said if MSP was possible to be implemented for all commodities by making it legal, governments would have done it long back.

As per the amendment, any trader who fails to purchase farm goods at MSP would attract a jail term of one year or a fine of ~50,000, or both.

"Now, the danger is that traders would buy better quality produce at MSP and will avoid buying the remaining produce if market prices are not reasonably high," Chand said.

Few years back, Maharashtra had tried the same experiment with soybean, but it did not go down well as traders just purchased high-quality produce leaving the remaining with farmers.

The amendment has also done away with the mandate of having separate licenses as the entire state has been classified as a single market.