Agriculture ministry pushes for marketing reforms

The Agriculture Ministry has drafted a model namely, the Agricultural Produce and Livestock Marketing (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2017, said a government release on Tuesday.
 
It provides for progressive agricultural marketing reforms, including setting up markets in private sector, direct marketing, farmer-consumer markets, de-regulation of fruits and vegetables, e-trading, single point levy of market fee, issue of unified single trading license in the state, declaring warehouses/silos/cold storage as market sub-yards and Market Yards of National Importance (MNI) so that more markets are available for farmers to sell their produce for better prices.
 
The agriculture ministry also informed that a meeting of ministers of agricultural marketing of states implementing e-NAM was held and the progress of implementation of National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) was reviewed. 
 
The states were urged to adopt the Model Agriculture Produce and Livestock Marketing (Promotion & Facilitation) Act, 2017. State representatives were requested to make all efforts for successful implementation of the scheme to achieve the objectives for optimising benefits to the farmers, it added.