Private entities providing services such as transportation, logistics, assaying, weather forecast and fintech will be integrated into the electronic National Agriculture Market (e-NAM), a move that would make more farmers use the platform to sell their produce to buyers of their choice. Once the digital integration is completed, around 1.75 crores registered farmers, farmer producer organisations (FPOs), traders, commission agents and other stakeholders with the eNAM platform can avail themselves of these services. “The idea behind this integrated platform under e-NAM is to make available end-to-end services to farmers along with providing a platform for price discovery,” Neel Kamal Darbari, MD, Small Farmers’ Agri-Business Consortium (SFAC), told FE. Currently the modalities for integration of digital platforms of private entities on the e-NAM platform is being worked out.
SFAC is aiming at bringing on board as many players so that farmers have the choice to take agri-services after registering with e-NAM portal. Currently, 1,000 mandis in 22 states and Union territories are integrated into the e-NAM platform, which was launched in April 2016. According to official data, 1.72 crore farmers, 2,050 FPOs, 2.13 lakh traders and around 1 lakh commission agents are registered with e-NAM. However, inter-state trade in farm produce — facility for a farmer in one state to sell his produce to buyer in another state — is yet to gather momentum. This is one of the chief objectives of this platform for price discovery.
Around 530-odd mandis are currently offering online trading facilities to farmers while around 97,000 unified licences valid for the state concerned have been issued to 2 lakh traders registered on e-NAM platform. Foodgrains, oilseeds, spices, fruits and vegetables are traded on the platform. The mandate of e-NAM, being administered by SFAC, which is a registered society of the ministry of agriculture & farmers’ welfare, is to provide a digital platform integrating physical wholesale mandis or markets of different states and UTs. This platform facilitates online trading of agricultural commodities.
Darbari of SFAC said that the platform helps farmers in a transparent price discovery method, which enables farmers to realise better remunerative prices for their produce. “Farmers on the platform see the live prices prevailing in other parts of the country, which help in price discovery,” Darbari said.
Because of small land holding of the farmers, SFAC has been focussing on formation of FPOs and encouraging them participate in the e-NAM platform for collective bargaining power. SFAC launched FPO trading module during covid-19 restrictions to enable FPOs to upload their produce from collection centres, farm gate with picture and quality parameter for online bidding, without physically bringing their produce to the mandis.Meanwhile, SFAC has empanelled private banks such as Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, HDFC Bank, Indusind Bank and ICICI Bank for provisioning of payment and settlement services for e-NAM transactions.
The empanelment of these banks enables collections and settlement of funds to various e-NAM registered beneficiaries across the country.