Battlefield Harda
Will it Sustain?
These modernisation projects are often driven by the state marketing board, local mandi officials and the mandi samiti, which is made up of farmers and traders. This makes progress slow. For the sample auction pilot at Harda, samples of soybean collected from an entire lot were auctioned in a hall and electronic boards were used to show prices. However, there is no grading facility and traders say deciding prices for several quintals based on just a one-kilo sample can be tricky since quality varies even within a single consignment. Farmers too don’t want sample auctions as lack of grading means their good quality grain does not fetch the highest prices.
Mandis must learn to manage scale. As arrivals at the mandi picked up during harvest season — to 5488.5 metric tonnes of wheat in December 2008 and 3948 metric tonnes in January 2009 from 3140.6 metric tonnes in August 2008 — the pilot for the sample auction was discontinued because the rush of produce caused delays.
But the Madhya Pradesh government intends to take this experiment to the next step by moving to electronic trading at its mandis, says Vivek Aggarwal, commissioner of the Madhya Pradesh Agriculture Marketing Board. To enable buyers across the country to buy at its mandis, the Board will set up certified grading facilities.
Regulation passed in March allows private players to set up private mandis or spot exchanges in the state. The National Spot Exchange, which runs spot exchanges in several states including Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, has applied to run four such exchanges in Madhya Pradesh. The government is now working to set up infrastructure needed for this, including warehouses and cold storage facilities, says Aggarwal.
But while the Agriculture Marketing Board seems to look at Choupal Saagar as a model to bring back the big farmers to the mandis, experts say a government-run mandi needs to have an eye out for small farmers too. The government has brought in smaller electronic weighing machines for the secondary mandis as well, but making farming viable for small farmers could be its biggest challenge yet.
“Big farmers had migrated to ITC because they were the ones who had the truckloads of similar quality grain that ITC wanted,” says Jaya Mehta, an Indore-based economist researching on the impact of ITC’s direct procurement on the state’s farmers. “Big farmers benefited from not having to pay for unloading grain. And it is these farmers the government mandis want to woo back. But the government-run mandi is the only place for small and marginal farmers to find a market and it is them the government needs to get the best deal for.”
The Harda experiment is being closely watched because it strengthens mandis at a time when more than 16 states have amended the APMC (Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee) Act to allow companies to procure produce directly from farmers. If it works, it could ensure that mandi inefficiencies do not drive farmers into the hands of private players.
Meanwhile, at the tea stall outside the mandi, Bishnoi and his friends compare prices between the conventional and sample auction, debating where to go for the best deal.
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