Farm-gate, inter-mandi e-NAM sales surge in FY24; 18 million farmers, across 1361 mandis on the platform

With more states opening up or facilitating trade of agricultural commodities on the electronic -National Agriculture Market (eNAM), a spurt in trading among various markets within the state as well as at the inter-state level is being witnessed.

An agriculture ministry official said that farmers in several states — Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir –have sold commodities such as paddy, maize, cotton, cauliflower, onion and tomato without physically transporting commodities to mandis using farm gate purchase model through e-NAM.

While the volume of farm gate, inter-state and inter-mandi trade is still a small portion of total turnover of e-NAM at Rs 63,530 crore in April-January (2023-24), up 4% on year, it indicates a gradual shift to the digital platform, being used for better price discovery by the farmers.

The total traded value of commodities on the digital platform using the farmgate model during April – January, 2023-24 has been Rs 79 crore compared to a very small amount traded last fiscal.

Officials have urged other states to follow the farm gate purchase model so that farmers could sell their commodities at appropriate time and save costs

In the April-January period of the current fiscal, there has been a 151% spike in inter-mandi trade on e-NAM to Rs 1299 crore. In terms of inter-state trade, which was not happening a year ago, there has been an increase since the beginning of the year.

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.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her interim-budget speech had said “e-NAM has integrated 1361 mandis, and is providing services to 18 million farmers with a trading volume of Rs 3 trillion,”.

Mandis integrated into e-NAM platform since its launch in April 2016, are in 27 states and Union Territories including Tamil Nadu (157), Rajasthan (145), Gujarat (144), Maharashtra (133), Uttar Pradesh (125) and Haryana (108).

In addition, 3405 FPOs, 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 209 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.

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 all 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.