Maharashtra plans to delist fruits, vegetables from APMC ambit

Farmers to get a choice for selling produce directly if they don't want to come to mandi; amendment bill expected in state assembly's monsoon session

The Maharashtra government is moving to end the compulsion on farmers to sell their produce only at wholesale markets run by Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMC).

The plan is to formally de-list vegetables and fruit from the items in this regard, so that these may be sold outside APMC markets, too. Minister for marketing and cooperatives, Chandrakant Patil, said APMCs would not be dismantled. “Those who desire to operate under the regulated mechanism can do so through APMCs,” he said.

Others could sell in the open market. Currently, farmers are bound to sell vegetables and fruit to only traders licensed by the APMCs.

The government has set up a committee on the issue, to be followed by legislation; the latter could even come in the next session of the legislative assembly. In 2014-15, the combined turnover of APMCs in Maharashtra was Rs 67,000 crore.

With this, the state proposes to be part of the Centre’s much debated National Agriculture Mission. The decision will enable state’s 30 APMCs to become part of the proposed National Agricultural Market (NAM) and do e-trading, getting access to the national market. The central government has announced a NAM is being created but states wanted to participate need to reform their agricultural marketing laws.

“The move will (primarily) benefit large traders with deep pocket. Small traders with a close association with farmers would go out of the market; money will be the prime deciding factor,” complained Sanjay Bhujbal, a vegetable trader at the APMC in Vashi, Navi Mumbai.

The point here is that vegetable traders and small farmers have an existing relationship; in times of emergency or other needed help, traders advance money, to be deducted after the harvest. Bhujbal said such help would not be extended to farmers opting out of the system. Which is why the argument has also been made that a mechanism is also needed to cover farmers in such situations.