Even as various political parties are opposing Foreign Direct Investment in retail, Maharahstra farmers have already pioneered the art of retailing and reduced the Agriculture Produce Market Committees (APMC) trade from Rs 43,000 crore to Rs 37,000 crore in year 2012-13.
This is one of the Government’s efforts to dismantle and discourage middlemen system in marketing the agriculture produce. The government is encouraging farmers to sign pacts with societies in nearby towns and selling produce directly to the inhabitants and this has resulted in reduction in APMC trade last year.
The Agriculture Ministry in Maharashtra organises guided foreign tours for framers to learn innovative agricultural techniques that they can adopt to boost productivity. This has changed lives of many farmers in villages near Pune. The farmers, say, the foreign tours have helped them bring attitudinal change towards agriculture and although all the techniques adopted foreign may not be adopted here, some techniques have done wonders for them.
On visit, farmers in nearby Pune villages, showed how polyhouse agriculture has helped them to increase their produce of vegetables and some of them even have been able to bring back the youth in their families back to agriculture. Farmers here make a group and help each other sharing technology and diversify their produce. Every group has a leader – village leader- who helps them to aggregate their produce and transport and sell it directly to consumers in Pune societies. This has helped the farmers bypass the middlemen chain and earn more money.
The Ministry gives subsidy to farmers for polyhouse, mulching, micro-irrigation, and water reservoirs. The quantum of subsidy varies from scheme to scheme, but farmers are happy to put in their share as the techniques have helped them multiply their produce many fold from the same set of land.
In April the ministry had taken 47 farmers to Europe. Farmers have to pay only 50% of the cost and the rest is borne by the government. The Ministry plans to send 1,000 farmers annually on such study tours to Europe, South America, Australia and New Zealand.
The Agriculture Minister Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil said, “Most of the time, farmers are cheated by traders. Hence, we are now encouraging farmers to do contract farming and sell directly to consumers. We are now focusing on how the state farmers can sell their agricultural goods in various parts of the country. As part of this, we are planning to open information offices in five major cities.”
Patil said his state is now in the process of integrating agriculture and marketing departments of the State Government for effective implementation of the government schemes so that farmers can get maximum benefit. Sometimes, farmers are unaware of the facilities being provided at the different facility centres of the Government.