Digital market falters, leaves farmers with fewer buyers and weaker returns

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. New Delhi: The government's move to upgrade its digital farm marketplace, meant to give farmers access to more markets and better prices, has run into implementation glitches, with Rajasthan reporting data mismatches, login issues, and stalled mandi operations.

The old electronic National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) system was shut down even before onboarding to the revamped version was complete, forcing farmers back to local physical mandis, where fewer buyers mean reduced competition and lower price realisations, two people directly involved in the transition process told Mint on the condition of anonymity. The disruption could not have come at a worse time, as kharif crop arrivals start to surge.

“Any disruption during the transition is therefore seen as significant, especially during the peak arrival season of kharif crops. When e-NAM is not working and farmers have to sell their produce in the physical mandi, they lose access to competitive bidding from multiple mandis, and must rely only on the traders present locally on that day, which reduces competition and can lead to lower prices," said the first of the two persons cited earlier, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity.

e-NAM is one of the central government's flagship digital reforms for agriculture, connecting about 18 million farmers through 1,522 mandis onboarded on the platform, out of the nearly 7,500 regulated mandis across the country. The platform aims to improve price discovery, reduce cartelization, and allow farmers to sell beyond their local mandis, helping them secure better returns and increase their income.