Inter-state trade on the electronic National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) has declined by 62% in the first quarter of FY26. This indicates that the facility’s stated objective of ensuring pan-India market access sans physical boundaries for farmers, continues to remain a pipedream.
Sources told FE that inter-state and inter-mandi trades on the digital platform, launched over eight years back remain very small compared to overall trade indicating that most of the sales on e-NAM are reported from within the wholesale markets.
The e-NAM has already digitally integrated over 1,500 wholesale markets.
During April-June period of FY26, trade on pan-India digital wholesale portal witnessed a marginal increase of 4% to Rs 19,784 crore compared to the same period in 2024-25, inter-mandi and inter-state trade declined on year.
Trade via eNAM between mandis within the states grew to Rs 445 crore in April-June, 2025-26, an increase of 4% on year. Only 675 agricultural produce market committee (APMC) mandi have participated in the inter-mandi trade. Last fiscal, trade between mandis rose to Rs 1769 crore, an increase of 7% compared to FY24.
Sources said that in the first quarter of FY26, the fledgling inter-state eNAM trade declined sharply by over 62% to just Rs 2.92 crore from Rs 7.65 crore in Q1 of 2024-25. Last fiscal, inter-state trade on platform had declined sharply by 50% to Rs 21 crore from Rs 42 crore in FY24.
Since its launch in April, 2016, the platform has reported sales of Rs 4.39 lakh crore so far out of which only Rs 5916 crore was on account of inter-mandi trade.
Overall sales turnover of e-NAM, rose to Rs 80,262 crore in 2024-25, a marginal increase of 2% compared to FY24.
The farmgate sales reported on e-NAM dropped by 12% to mere Rs 11.3 crore in the first quarter of FY26 on year. The sale of commodities at farmers’ fields on e-NAM declined to only Rs 63 crore in FY25 from Rs 94 crore in FY24.
Experts say that the low volume of inter-state and inter-mandi trade being reported for the last few years hampers the growth of the platform being used for better price discovery by the farmers.
It implies that the eNAM goal of creating a pan-India market for agriculture goods, with unfettered market access for farmers regardless of their geographical locations, has been a non-starter.
Currently, 1522 mandis in 27 states and union territories including Tamil Nadu (213), Rajasthan (173), Gujarat (144), Maharashtra (133), Uttar Pradesh (162) and Haryana (108) mandis are on e-NAM platform.
Also, 17.94 million farmers, 4,518 FPOs, 267,719 traders and 1,16,042 commission agents are registered with e-NAM.
At present, 231 agricultural, horticultural and other commodities notified by respective state governments were finalized for online e-auction in e-NAM platform.
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.