The Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare has added 10 new agricultural commodities to expand the scope of trading under e-NAM (National Agriculture Market). These additional 10 trading parameters are in line with the Government’s continued efforts to modernise the agriculture sector, which will ensure greater inclusiveness, efficiency and market transparency.The Directorate of Marketing and Inspection (DMI) has formulated tradable parameters for 10 commodities, taking the total number of tradable commodities to 231. This updated list will be available on the e-NAM platform.
List of 10 newly added items
Miscellaneous items:
1. Dried basil leaves
2. Besan (Gram flour)
3. Wheat flour
4. Chana sattu (roasted gram flour)
5. Water chestnut flour
Spices:
6. Asafoetida
7. Dried fenugreek leaves
Vegetables:
8. Water chestnut
9. Baby corn
Fruits:
10. Dragon fruit
Directorate of Marketing and Inspection (DMI)
- DMI was established in 1935 as an attached office of the Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.
- The Directorate is headed by the Agricultural Marketing Adviser to the Government of India.
- Head Office: – Faridabad (Haryana); Branch Head Office: – Nagpur (Maharashtra).
- It maintains close liaison between the Central and State Governments.
- The function of DMI is to implement agricultural marketing policies and programmes for integrated development of marketing of agricultural and other allied products in the country.
- DMI is entrusted with the task of developing tradable parameters for agricultural commodities available on the e-NAM (National Agriculture Market) platform.
e-NAM Platform
- Launched in 2016. It is an all-India electronic trading portal, which provides single-window services for all Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) mandis to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities.
- APMCs are established by the state government to regulate the marketing of agricultural and fisheries produce under the Model Agricultural Produce and Livestock Marketing (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2017 (APLM Act).
- It is not a parallel marketing structure. It serves as a means to establish a national network of online accessible physical mandis.
- It aims to promote stable price and availability of quality produce to consumers.
- It is fully funded by the Central Government and implemented by Small Farmers Agri-Business Consortium3 (SFAC) under the aegis of Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.