AGRICULTURAL MARKETING AND ISSUES – 4

Summary

Agricultural marketing comprises all operations involved in the movement of farm produce from the producer to
the ultimate consumer.
 It includes the operations such as collecting, grading, processing, preserving, transportation and
financing.
 The actors in product marketing include farmers, traders, wholesalers, processors, importers, exporters,
marketing cooperatives, regulated market committees and retailers.
 Outcomes of Agriculture Marketing:
o Monetizing the Produce
o Demand Signal Platform
o Market growth
o Capital formation and investment in technology

Issues and constraints in Marketing:

 Lack of Grading and Standardization.
 Presence of a Large Number of Middlemen.
 Cartelization
 High user fees
 Malpractices in Unregulated Markets.
 Inadequate Market Information.
 Inadequate Credit Facilities.
 Fragmented supply chain.
 Poor market infrastructure.

Steps were taken to improve Marketing:

 Electronic National Agriculture Market (eNAM): The government has created eNAM to connect all
regulated wholesale produce markets through a pan-India trading portal.
 E-governance portal AGMARKNET: It facilitates generation and transmission of prices, commodity arrival
information from agricultural produce markets, and web-based dissemination to producers, consumers,
traders, and policymakers transparently and quickly.
 Kisan Credit Card scheme: to provide term loans for agricultural needs.
 Formation and Promotion of FPOs(Farmer Producer Organizations): FPOs will be promoted under the
“One District One Product” cluster to promote specialization and better processing, marketing, branding
& export by FPOs.
 Market Intelligence and Early Warning System(MIEWS) Portal: To provide advisories to farmers to avoid
cyclical production as well as an early warning in situations of gluts.

Further measures to improve Marketing:

 Promotion of Cluster-Based Organizations.
 Encourage Public-Private Partnership
 Promote Direct Selling- Farm Gate Model.
 Use of Artificial Intelligence: It can aid them in a range of decisions on matters pertaining to crop inputs
to those related to markets and prices.
 AgTech startups should be roped in for price discovery mechanism, so that price volatility can be
controlled.