Farm-Gate Buying Is The Need Of The Hour

Maha FPC’s two-tier structure shows how traders and agri-processors can collect produce directly from farmers, bypassing APMCs

- Rajalakshmi Nirmal

‘Farmers face lockdown heat’, ‘Farmers stranded with fruits and veggies’ and other similar newspaper headlines gained attention two weeks ago.

But on the evening of March 27, the Centre released an order saying mandis are exempt from the lockdown, bringing relief to lakhs of farmers harvesting their wheat, gram and other rabi crops across the country.

But, since the order, none of the big grain mandis are is open. The reason is that traders have refused to turn up and Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) and State Marketing Board heads have been racking their brains on how to control crowds and ensure social distancing once mandis are opened.

The task is easier said than done. In the beginning of the arrival season, there will be hundreds of farmers and traders inside a mandi everyday, besides the hamalis (loading/unloading labourers), the mandi staff and truck drivers. Regulating the crowd and ensuring social distancing will be practically impossible. However, with the number of positive COVID-19 cases rising by the day and spread of the virus being observed in rural India, the issue at hand is serious.

The only way out is decentralised procurement by bringing new market yards outside APMC that can split the crowd. Given the way State machineries have been functioning over the past fiveplus decades, they will probably set up these new market yards as temporary arrangements without amending the APMC Act and bringing new players to compete with the existing APMC mandis.

Not many traders, corporate firms and institutions in the agro-processing sector, however, buy the idea of decentralised procurement.