This was stated by Prof. K.V. Thomas, Minister of State for Agriculture, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution while inaugurating the Agri Marketing Summit “Enhancing Competitiveness of Indian Agriculture” here today. He said several reforms have already been initiated in this direction in laws dealing with agriculture namely, the APMC Act, the Essential Commodities Act, and the Forward Contracts Act. Integrated Food law and legislation dealing with negotiable warehousing receipt system have been amended keeping in view the changing needs of farmers, consumers, trade and industries, the Minister informed. Prof. Thomas further said the focus of reforms in State APMC Act includes provision for creation of an enabling environment to attract private sector investment to market infrastructure, for enabling direct marketing of produce by farmers and contract farming while protecting interests of farmers.

The Minister said that agriculture marketing being a State subject, the wholesale trading of agricultural commodity is regulated through State Agricultural Produce Marketing (Regulation) Acts in the respective States. In India, more than 620 billion tonnes of farm output is traded through a network of more than 27,357 wholesale and Primary Rural Markets and about 7139 Regulated Markets scattered across the States. However, many of the regulated markets lack proper infrastructure and facilities in tune with changing times and increased levels of production in the absence of competition. This has been further accentuated by weak backward linkages to the production centres.

Stressing on the development of agricultural marketing infrastructure in the country to provide higher value to farmers' crops, quality raw material for agro-industries and food to consumers at reasonable price, Prof. Thomas said that the investment from private sector will play dominant role in different parts of food value chain. The government has taken a number of reform initiatives viz launching of National Horticulture Mission (NHM) for development of need based infrastructure with end to end approach and enhancing horticultural production and productivity. A reform linked Central Sector Scheme of

Development/Strengthening marketing infrastructure Grading and Standardization is being implemented in the States which have amended their APMC Acts to provide for market reforms.

The Minister said that the guidelines for setting up state of the art Modern Terminal Markets Complex for perishable items like fruits and vegetables in Public Private Partnership mode with subsidy provision under NHM have been recently revised. The Government has already provided in-principle approval for setting up of Terminal Market Complex at Babangaon in Thane District near Mumbai in Maharashtra, at Perundurai in Erode District in Tamil Nadu, in Patna in Bihar and in Sambalpur in Orissa. In Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Bihar bids are already underway. #