The APMC Act:Should it be Replaced?
Keywords:
APMC, Retail, Farmers.Abstract
APMC stands for Agricultural Produce Market Committee. Even though it was passed in1954 with the objective to help the farmers, the APMC act had several loopholes and drawbacks. In our study, we have focussed on these drawbacks of the APMC act and how the farmers are still getting exploited despite the Act being in place. The act also got amended in the year 2003 yet most farmers continue to get exploited by the intermediaries even today.
The main objective of our research is
1) To understand the issues pertaining to the APMC act in India and its implication on all the stakeholders of the dry grocery retailing in India.
2) To suggest methods by which the modern retail can help in solving the issues existing due to APMC
In our secondary research, we have studied about the initiatives taken by some big retailers like ITC and Reliance Fresh and how those initiatives have helped the farmers as well the companies in taking a constant supply of the raw material required which is of desired quality level. The indepth study of the two models has provided us with many strategies that our new proposed model could incorporate. We have also studied about the changes that were brought in the APMC act in 2003. The amendments in the act allowed Direct Marketing and Contract Farming and also greater transparency in the whole procurement process. We have taken examples of each and shown how these amendments have helped improve the farmer's condition. However, a large number of farmers still sell to the government regulated mandis and are not given access to all the necessary information and very often exploited. Hence, we are proposing a new model that could help the farmers and eliminate the middlemen from the procurement process. However, there are limitations and problems associated with the implementation of our proposed model that needs to be addressed. However, it is taking a step towards the improvement of the whole system as a whole and this issue must be addressed as it is a critical issue as it is related to agriculture and our country is dependent on it.
