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14 Mar 2022 Meri Fasal Mera Byora E-Procurement Portal

Posted at 16:13h in Daily current-affairs by khyati khare 0 Comments

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Haryana Government has launched ‘Meri Fasal-Mera Byora e-procurement’ portal. Through this portal, Haryana has become the first state in India where 14 crops are procured at Minimum Support Price (MSP).
These crops include wheat, mustard, barley, gram, paddy, maize, millet, cotton, sunflower, moong, groundnut, tur, urad and sesame.
This portal is an important step towards faster adoption of Digital Governance (e-Governance) as a means of improving agriculture and ensuring increase in farmers’ income.

The portal was launched in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In less than two years, 8.71 lakh or more than 80% of the total farmers in the state registered on the portal in the Rabi season.
The objective of the portal is to facilitate online sales, under which 81 mandis of the state have been linked with the ‘e-NAM’ (Electronic National Agriculture Market) portal.
The ‘e-NAM’ platform provides a pan-India electronic trading portal, which brings together the existing APMC (Agriculture Produce Market Commodities) mandis in a single network to create a unified national market for agricultural products.

Objective: The overarching objective of the government’s policy of procurement of food grains is to ensure MSP for the farmers and to ensure availability of food grains at affordable prices to the weaker sections.
It also ensures effective market intervention so as to keep the prices under check as well as take care of the overall food security of the country.
Procurement under price support is mainly done to ensure remunerative price to the farmers for their produce which acts as an incentive to get better production.
Nodal Agency: Food Corporation of India is the nodal central agency of the Government of India to procure wheat and paddy under the price support scheme along with other state agencies.
As per the guidelines issued by the Government of India from time to time, coarse grains are procured by the State Government Agencies for the Central Pool.
Role of CACP: Before harvest during each Rabi/Kharif crop season, Government of India announces Minimum Support Price (MSP) for procurement based on the recommendation of Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP).
Role of State Governments: In order to facilitate the procurement of food grains, FCI and various state agencies have set up a large number of procurement centers in various mandis in consultation with the state government.

Monopoly of middlemen: With the existing infrastructure agricultural produce reaches only the nearest agricultural market which is under the jurisdiction of APMC (Agriculture Produce Market Commodity).
After meeting the expenses of traveling, packing and sorting the produce, the farmers reach the local mandis and wait for the perishables to be sold.
Farmers have to rely on local agents for sorting, grading and other essential agricultural processes, thus relying heavily on middlemen who are not always trustworthy or honest.
Harmful to farmers’ interests: This undeclared monopoly that exists, affecting commodity growth and free flow of the agricultural value chain, is also harmful to local farmers and their livelihoods.

Deployment of modern technology: With the introduction of modern technology and digital machinery using technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, machine learning, climate-smart advisory, geo-tagging and Internet of Things, there has been an increase of investors in the agriculture sector in the last few years. A substantial increase in numbers has been observed.
Recently, the Prime Minister has flagged off 100 farmer drones in different cities and towns of India to spray pesticides in India’s fields.
Benefit to farmers: Digital mandis are enabling farmers to interact directly with wholesalers and other local traders, eliminating middlemen involved in the process, who are responsible for their movement and the type, variety and price point of the crop.