Agriculture Produce Market Committee

Agriculture Produce Market Committee is Marketing board platform where the farmers can sell their products which is established by the state government of India.

Since 1950s, The Agriculture Produce Market Committee started enacting and which has two major objectives :
1. To ensure that farmer gets a good amount of fair money
2. To ensure that farmers are not exploited

There are defined spaces/areas where the agriculturist and buyers can come together and trade the food etc with the profitable margin. Foods can be stored at the Storage godowns etc.
Also there may be the direct selling-buying methods where farmer can directly sell their goods. The training to farmers given by the community to control the price fluctuations and for various benefits.
For example :

There are lots of initiatives for this direct selling. In Indian states it is called as Apni Mandi in Punjab and Haryana, Rythu Bazar in AP, Kisan Mandi in Rajasthan, Uzhavar Shanthigal in Tamil Nadu, Shetkari Bazar in Maharashtra, etc.

Hence, At different places of Indian states, The Market or Mandis are formed where farmers can sell their products through Auctions.

Under Agriculture Produce Market Committee-APMC, There are 10-17 members are elected by the government or Nominated by the government for the APMC act.

Obstacles for APMC

To get the license and operate the Mandi or Market where direct selling of the farmer’s products happen, Farmer must own his shop or place or warehouse or storage in that place which is far more expensive and limited in nature.
For the poor or middle class farmer, It is a big investment to start this business in APMCs. Even the Hamals, Paddlers, weighmen have to get license.
These has become the worst part in terms of Political as well as Bribe scenarios in India. Hence, The Mandi people or farmers sometimes overcharged to recover the investment.
Moreover the regular elections is not happening for the APMC board and some Indian states runs the Mandis under the Panchayati Raj institutions.
In Mandis or Market, Whatever the transaction or trading happens, That is subjected to market tax plus market cess But to avoid these tax/cess, The traders do not give the sale slip or purchase slip to farmers to save taxes and this becomes the hurdle for the farmers to get the loans in future from the banks because they fail to show their income in respective manner.
By Union Agricultural Ministry, The new model for APMC introduced In 2003 which helps farmers that he can directly sell their produce to whoever he wants and not to bring his produces to APMC Mandi or Market. Due to this, The private committee have been formed and farmers trading their purchases with the profitable margin without exploitation. And in this way, APMC act has increased their responsibilities.
Every Indian states has rights whether to adopt the the new model of an APMC or not. Till now 17 Indian states have amended their APMC act out of 35 states and Union Territories (UTs) to allow the direct marketing, Selling or purchasing the farmer produce. However the seven states and Union Territories (UTs) don’t have any kind of APMC act to govern the agriculture trade.

The main disadvantage for having having an APMC act is that Mandis or Markets are controlled or operated by few nominated traders and they can exploit the farmers and get bribe from them.

Hence, Correct function of an APMC act is necessary to avoid the worst cases like farmer suicide and overly debt farmers. In the long term, APMC can not give the smooth solution and remain the fickle as the price for production has been changing. These all things are dependent directly or indirectly on the Indian Government regulatory board how and what kind of traders has to be nominated for Mandi or market under APMC.

We can say that The APMC (Agricultural Produce Market Committees) is the relic past that forces the farmer or producer to go through the Broker and then sell their products which means that this increase the prices buyers.

Earlier the APMC(Agricultural Produce Market Committees) act was put in the place to protect farmer from the evil money landers or traders who would trade the farmer’s produce at pitiful prices. And at the end both end buyers and farmers has to go through the major loss and government has to ask farmers to payback loan immediately after harvest. The APMC Act has objective to cut down the middle men but the monopolized and loopholes remained the same.

No matter how APMC act transparent or good is, But the function or implementation of the act sucks the whole flow. Indian Government should work on the loopholes like flexibility to farmers to sell produce outside, trader’s monopoly, hoarding and black marketing), privatization etc.

Recently, Indian state Bihar state amended the APMC(Agricultural Produce Market Committees) act to include private players, which is being followed by many other states. Gujarat’s APMC act is progressive and innovative.

In the Final conclusion, The APMC(Agricultural Produce Market Committees) is yet another rule that created the poverty and distribution of produce system run by the Indian government through the license and which is politically handled and affected on many small urban area farmers and hence that led to many suicides and monetary loss to the farmers.