With more states opening up or facilitating trade of agricultural commodities on the government’s electronic – National Agriculture Market (e-NAM), trade on the digital wholesale platform crossed Rs 78,424 crore in FY24, up 5% on year.
In the last five years, trade on the digital wholesale market run by the agriculture ministry has increased by 124% last fiscal from Rs 34,940 crore in 2019-20.
Sources told FE that there has also been a significant spurt in inter-mandi and inter-state trading of agri-commodities on the digital platform, which currently integrates 1389 mandis across 27 states.
“We are focussing on increasing electronic-payments to farmers and boosting inter-mandi and inter-state trade on e-NAM,” an official said.
In addition, farmers in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir have sold several commodities paddy, maize, cotton, cauliflower, onion and tomato without physically transporting commodities to mandis using farm gate purchase model through e-NAM.
Officials said that while the volume of farm gate, inter-state and inter-mandi trade is still a small portion of total turnover of e-NAM, it indicates a gradual shift to the digital platform, being used for better price discovery by the farmers.
In FY24, there has been a 130% spike in inter-mandi trade on e-NAM to Rs 1660 crore on year. In terms of inter-state trade, which was not happening a year ago, there has been an increase last fiscal.
The total traded value of commodities on the digital platform using the farmgate model last fiscal has been Rs 94 crore compared to a very small amount traded in FY23
The ministry has urged states to relax norms including allowing traders from outside to buy and sell commodities without bank guarantee, provisioning of unified license for seamless statewide trade access and procurement from farm gate.
The mandis integrated into the digital platform since its launch in April 2016 includes Tamil Nadu (157), Rajasthan (145), Gujarat (144), Maharashtra (133), Uttar Pradesh (125) and Haryana (108).
In addition, 3685 farmer producers Organisations, 0.25 million traders and around 0.11 million commission agents are registered with e-NAM.
The e-NAM platform currently allows online trading in 219 agricultural, horticultural and other commodities notified by respective state governments.
Sources said there are estimated to be around 7000 mandis in the country and after the recommendation from mandi boards of respective states, the marketplace for agricultural produce comes on board of e-NAM.
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her interim-budget speech in February, 2024 had stated “e-NAM is providing services to 18 million farmers with a trading volume of Rs 3 trillion,”.
While stating that the e-NAM is the only digital platform with no user charges are being levied on the transaction, the agriculture ministry has urged the central agencies such as Food Corporation of India, farmers’ cooperative NAFED and others engaged in procurement and selling of grain, pulses and other agricultural produce to use the platform for better price discovery.