To Market Agri Produce, Amul Marketing Model May Be Adopted.

New Delhi: For marketing agricultural produce the government may use the cooperative milk marketing template of dairy products maker Amul, as it aims to cut out the middlemen and ensure higher remuneration for farmers. This could be done by incentivising private players to work as integrators of fruits and vegetables, told a senior official at Niti Aayog.

While requesting anonymity, official said "We are seriously considering to replicate Amul's aggregator model of cooperative farming to market our farm produce. Under this, private players could be incentivised to work as aggregators to collect farm produce and sell it to consumers." The Niti Aayog recently released a paper on agriculture development for stakeholder consultation.

This paper suggests encouraging integrators who would buy fruits and vegetables at village level just as milk collection centres collect milk and supply them directly to retailers including e-retailers in towns and cities.

The paper said "This backend to frontend linkage will connect farm to consumers and is a win-win step for both the producer and the consumer."

Recognising that agricultural markets in India are not keeping pace with the changes in production and demand, the paper has vouched for urgent reforms in agricultural marketing to enable farmers to receive a large proportion of the final price paid by the consumers.

Agricultural marketing in India suffers from fragmentation resulting from large number of intermediaries and poor infrastructure, lack of vertical integration and policy distortions.

The paper also said "A consequence of this fragmentation is that the farmer often received a small fraction of the final price paid by the consumer."

Source: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/