Ordinance on agricultural reforms gets Odisha Governor assent

BHUBANESWAR:  The State Government’s ordinance on Odisha Agricultural Produce and Livestock Marketing (Promotion and Facilitation), 2020 received the assent of Governor Prof Ganeshi Lal. This will replace the decades-old Odisha Agricultural Produce Markets Act, 1956.

In order to provide better marketing facilities to farmers, the Centre had released the model Agricultural Produce and Livestock Marketing (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2017 in April 2017 for its adoption by states and UTs.  The provisions in the Act provide alternate marketing channels other than APMCs to farmers in marketing their produce at competitive and remunerative prices.

The Government has implemented the e-National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) scheme to provide farmers with an opportunity for transparent price discovery for remunerative prices for their produce through a competitive online bidding system. In the light of the Government’s vision to double farmers’ income by 2022, it entails an urgent need to revisit the existing market structure of the country and bring in a more competitive marketing environment. 

“The restrictive and monopoly-centric agricultural market structure existing in the country today is not capable of permitting producers to harvest the economic advantages of place, time, and form value of their agricultural commodity,” said an officer of the Cooperation department. Prominent features of the new law include the abolition of the fragmentation of the market within the State by removing the concept of the notified market area so far as enforcement of regulation by APLMC is concerned.  The other objectives are the promotion of direct interface between farmers and processors/exporters/bulk-buyers/end-users so as to reduce the price spread bringing advantage to both the producers and the consumers.