State to convert warehouses into online marketing centres

Tandur: Even as the e-NAM scheme launched two years ago has become fully functional, the State government is toying up with the idea of launching another online marketing scheme with warehouses as centres.

The scheme is likely to be implemented with the help of the Telangana State Warehousing Corporation.There are 20 warehouses under the limits of the Tandur, Parigi, Vikarabad, Dharoor and Marpalli agricultural market yards with a total storage capacity of over 45,000 tonnes with each warehouse capable of storing 200-7,500 tonnes.

Farmers who fetch their produce to the agricultural market yards store the commodities in warehouses if they are part of the RythuBandhu scheme. Enrolling into the scheme is not an easy process, but a cumbersome mechanism. Therefore, those who are not members of the scheme store their produce on the side of the roads exposing them to sun and rain. The officials have let out the warehouses to civil supplies department, DCMS, private fertilizer traders citing farmers not using the warehouses.

The latest online warehousing marketing scheme entails registration of the warehouses as per the norms of the Warehouse Development Regulatory Authority. In the new scheme, farmers can sell their produce at the price they feel it right for them. Otherwise, they can obtain 80 per cent of the value of the goods as loan from banks. In Tandur and Vikarabad market yards e-NAM programme has been introduced in 2016. The Center introduced the scheme as traders were forming a syndicate to deny the remunerative price to the farmer. However, the programme did not prove to be beneficial to the farmers even after two years of launching the programme.

The e-NAM is accessed by a limited number of market yards in the country helping traders to form into a syndicate and quote lower prices. During the last kharif and rabi, agricultural products worth Rs 1,000 crore were sold. The farmer got the support price at the procurement centers and sustained losses in agricultural markets. While red gram was traded at RS 5,450 a quintal in the market yard here, the private traders purchased the quintal at a maximum price of Rs 4000. Against the MRP of Rs 1,550 and Rs 1,590 a quintal, the traders purchased paddy at Rs 1250 and Rs 1350 a quintal.

Since the officials let off the warehouse to other organizations, the farmers are not able to store their produce in the godowns in anticipation to get remunerative price. Where e-NAM is not in vogue, the farmers have no option except to sell the produce at a price fixed by the traders. In the warehouses registered with the state warehousing corporation, names of the farmers, nature of the quality, the price fixed by the farmer for the produce will be fed into the computer. The WDRA takes the responsibility of depositing the sales proceeds in the relevant farmer’s bank account.