India is an agricultural country and one third population depends on the agricultural sector directly or indirectly. Agriculture remains as the mainstay of the Indian economy since times immemorial. Indian agriculture has a large contribution to the national gross domestic product (GDP).

Agricultural marketing is mainly the buying and selling of agricultural products. In earlier days when the village economy was more or less self-sufficient the marketing of agricultural products presented no difficulty as the farmer sold his produce to the consumer on a cash or barter basis.

Today’s agricultural marketing has to undergo a series of exchanges or transfers from one person to another before it reaches the consumer. There are three marketing functions involved in this, i.e., assembling, preparation for consumption and distribution.

In India, there are several central government organisations, who are involved in agricultural marketing like, Commission of Agricultural Costs and Prices, Food Corporation of India, Cotton Corporation of India, Jute Corporation of India, etc. There are also specialised marketing bodies for rubber, tea, coffee, tobacco, spices and vegetables.

National Agriculture Market (NAM)

National Agriculture Market (NAM) is a pan-India electronic trading portal which networks the existing APMC mandis to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities.

Launched on 14^th April 2016, the NAM Portal provides a single window service for all APMC related information and services. This includes commodity arrivals & prices, buy & sell trade offers, provision to respond to trade offers, among other services. While material flow (agriculture produce) continue to happen through mandis, an online market reduces transaction costs and information asymmetry.

Better market linkage, provided under e-NAM, has integrated 1,000 markets across 22 States and 3 Union Territories. 1.74 Crore farmers and 2.37 Lakh traders were registered on e-NAM platform as of December 2022. Till December 2022, total volume of 6.80 crore MT and 20.05 crore numbers (Bamboo, Betel Leaves, Coconut, Lemon & Sweet corn) with collective worth of approximately Rs. 2.33 lakh crore of trade has been recorded on e-NAM platform. The three essential reforms the states must carry out for consideration are: (i) e-trading, (ii) single point levy of market fee (iii) unified single trading license for the state. Government of India provides certain assistance to the states, such as free access to e-NAM platform, financial assistance for computer hardware, internet facility and assaying equipment, mandi analyst for each e-NAM mandi for a year and training to stakeholders in mandis being integrated.

Agriculture marketing is administered by the States as per their agri-marketing regulations, under which, the State is divided into several market areas, each of which is administered by a separate Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) which imposes its own marketing regulation (including fees). This fragmentation of markets, even within the State, hinders free flow of agri commodities from one market area to another and multiple handling of agri-produce and multiple levels of mandi charges ends up escalating the prices for the consumers without commensurate benefit to the farmer.

NAM addresses these challenges by creating a unified market through online trading platform, both, at State and National level and promotes uniformity, streamlining of procedures across the integrated markets, removes information asymmetry between buyers and sellers and promotes real time price discovery, based on actual demand and supply, promotes transparency in auction process, and access to a nationwide market for the farmer, with prices commensurate with quality of his produce and online payment and availability of better quality produce and at more reasonable prices to the consumer.

Objectives of NAM

• A national e-market platform for transparent sale transactions and price discovery initially in regulated markets.
• Liberal licensing of traders / buyers and commission agents by State authorities without any pre-condition of physical presence or possession of shop /premises in the market yard.
• One license for a trader valid across all markets in the State.
• Harmonisation of quality standards of agricultural produce and provision for assaying (quality testing) infrastructure in every market to enable informed bidding by buyers.
• Single point levy of market fees, i.e on the first wholesale purchase from the farmer.
• Provision of Soil Testing Laboratories in/ or near the selected mandi to facilitate visiting farmers to access this facility in the mandi itself.

e-NAM Platform of Platforms (POP)

e-NAM integrates the platform of Service Providers as “Platform of Platforms” which includes Composite Service Providers (Service Providers who provide holistic services for trading of agricultural produce including quality analysis, trading, payment systems and logistics), Logistics Service Provider, Quality Assurance Service Provider, Cleaning, Grading, Sorting & Packaging Service Provider, Warehousing Facility Service Provider, Agricultural Input Service Provider, Technology Enabled Finance & Insurance Service Provider, Information Dissemination Portal (Advisory Services, crop forecasting, weather updates, capacity building for farmers etc.) and other platforms (e-commerce, international agri-business platforms, barter, private market platforms etc.).

The inclusion of various service providers not only adds to the value of the e-NAM platform, but also gives the users of the platform options to avail services from different service providers. It enables farmers, FPOs, traders and other stakeholders to access a wide variety of goods and services across the agricultural value chain through a single window, thereby giving more options to the stakeholders. The POP can be accessed through e-NAM mobile app which can be downloaded from Google Play Store.