APMC markets pricing, stock to go online

The Department of Agriculture & Cooperation is planning to provide pricing and availability of agricultural commodities at the Agricultural Products Market Committee (APMC) markets across the country online and through short messaging services (SMS). There are around 7,500 such markets in the country.

Speaking to Business Standard on the sidelines of a seminar on Warehousing 2008 organised by Ficci here recently, Prasanta Swain, director – Agriculture Marketing, Department of Agriculture & Cooperation, Ministry of Agriculture, said they were also in talks with the Department of Telecommunications to enable farmers to access the information through mobile phones.

Today a farmer is unable to access any information on the demand and price of his produce and due to this he is not getting the right price.

To address the issue, the department has decided to bring all the APMC wholesale markets under one roof, which will enable farmers to know the price, stock and arrival time. Currently, around 1,700 markets are updating the information on a daily basis, said Swain.

The 7,500 markets in the country will be brought under the new initiative in a phased manner. The remaining would be periodical and commodity-specific markets.

Around 90 per cent of the farmers have 2 acre of land and they don't have economic power and access to price.

“Whether the SMS service will be priced is yet to be decided,” said Swain.

The Maharashtra government has already started the initiative in association with global news service agency Reuters.

Swain said in the first stage, they would provide market information through websites and in the second stage would allow farmers and customers to directly transact their business online.