Atharva Manohar Desai

APMCs form the hub of agricultural trading which are democratically run local bodies. The major stakeholders are farmers, traders and consumers. Recently the amendment of the APMC Act has enabled licensed direct marketing agencies and private markets to participate actively in the agricultural marketing. It is imperative for the APMCs to provide to the stakeholders facilities for agricultural marketing in the form of basic and productive infrastructure for the purpose of:

• Proper Handling of Agricultural Produce
• Dissemination of Marketing Information
• Efficient Waste Management

The level of investment in utility infrastructures in APMCs is low, mainly because:

• Public utility infrastructures in APMCs like land development, compound wall, drainage, electricity, pavements, auction halls and auction sheds, toilets, and canteen are non productive assets. The share of these investments in the development of APMCs is large and needs longer gestation period.
• The infrastructure like godown, cold storage, cleaning, grading, and packing units can come up with public private partnership (PPP), but in order to attract private investors, support would be required in the form of advisory services and establishment of mechanisms for risk sharing.
• Moreover APMCs do not get the loan easily from the commercial banks for such development. Many a times, personal guarantee of the Directors of the Committee is demanded by the Banks for the loans of APMCs which is not agreed to by the Directors.

The result of this complex situation is either slow development or no development of APMC yards. The problem is addressed by providing assistance under MACP that would be linked to reforms in the functioning, management and operations of the market yard.

The farmers for their income heavily depend upon draft animals for agricultural operations as well as they depend on the milch animals for allied agricultural activity. Thus live stock market yards and small ruminant markets are important for acquisition and maintaining an income generating herd. It is therefore pertinent to provide in the live stock markets adequate facilities for farmers.
Majority of the Live Stock Markets (LSM) suffer from infrastructure constraints like unavailability of auction sheds for animals, weighing machines, milking machines, drinking water facility for human and animals, waste disposal arrangements. Most of the infrastructure required in LSM is basic in nature and non-productive. The income of these APMCs is only by way of cess. Therefore, APMCs do not get the loan easily from the commercial banks for such development. Many a times, personal guarantee of the Directors of the committee is demanded by the banks for the loans of APMCs which is not agreed to by the Directors.
The APMCs will not normally invest for developing auction shed for animals, tree grove or providing milking machines. Therefore, support from the Project for such activities would encourage the APMCs having cattle market to undertake such activities and will act as push factor.
The demand of meat animals for metro-cities like Mumbai and the external trade would need organized market outlets performing sale by weight. Organized trade in live meat animals though not popular yet in Maharashtra, has a great potential to lead to bulk trade / export trade and therefore could result into far better returns to the farmers. With these objectives in view, it is proposed to modernize 20 LSM and 4 Small Ruminant Market yards (SR Markets) out of 196 LSM in the State.