Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Shri Radha Mohan Singh will be reviewing the progress of two priority programs of the Government namely National Agricultural Market (e-NAM) and Soil Health Card on 5th July 2017 at Krishi Bhawan. State Ministers of Agri-marketing of the 13 States, markets of which have integrated to e-NAM, and State Agriculture Ministers of some selected States will be attending along with their senior State officials. The progressive agri-market reforms being driven by Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare and NITI Aayog incorporated in the new model Agriculture Produce and Livestock Marketing (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2017 will also be discussed to encourage the States to adopt the suggested provisions at the earliest to bring in the benefits for the farmers.
455 markets from 13 States have been integrated to the national web based portal of e-NAM with the registration of over 47 lakh farmers and 91,000 traders. This innovative market process is revolutionizing agri markets by ensuring better price discovery, bringing in transparency and competition to enable farmers to get improved remuneration for their produce moving towards “One Nation One Market”. The Soil Health Card scheme is helping the farmers to know the nutrition status of their land and receiving advisory for rationalization of inputs, thereby reducing costs and increasing returns through appropriate cropping patterns. The second cycle which began from 1st May 2017 is building on the learnings of the first cycle so as to improve efficiency and make its use more acceptable by the farmers. So far 9 crore soil health cards have been distributed to farmers in all the States of the country. The review meeting will enable Central and State Governments to jointly address issues to take these programs forward thereby contributing to enhancing farmers income – the prime objective of all the programs of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare