Harchand Singh Barst, the Chairman of the Punjab Mandi Board, stated that creating awareness among farmers about e-marketing is crucial for the farmers' prosperous future. Keeping this in mind, farmers are being encouraged to learn about the Electronic-National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) scheme, and training is being provided on the e-NAM portal and mobile app.
E-marketing provides farmers the facility to sell their produce in various states and around the world, and it is a platform that operates 24 hours. Through this, farmers can sell their produce at any time. During a demonstration of machines used for quality inspection of crops, Harchand Singh Barst, Chairman of the Punjab Mandi Board, explained that these machines use artificial intelligence (AI) technology to inspect the quality of crops, providing detailed information about defects such as damaged grains, stones, and adulteration.
He mentioned that these machines will soon be installed in different mandis across Punjab to benefit the farmers. Harchand Singh Barst further informed that so far, 2,17,491 farmers, 8,946 commission agents, and 2,874 traders have been registered on the e-NAM portal.
E-trading has been conducted for a total of 35.04 lakh tons of crops, including potatoes, basmati rice, corn, ginger, moong beans, cotton, green peas, bell peppers, watermelon, lychee, and sunflower. He said that the Punjab government has approved the e-NAM scheme for e-trading of only 11 commodities to ensure better prices for the state's major crops.
Recently, sunflower was added to e-trading. He emphasized that farmers, especially youth, should explore online grocery portals and market options available on social media sites to make their agriculture a more profitable business. Additionally, he suggested creating personal web portals to sell their products directly to consumers.
Barst stated that the goal of the Punjab government is to empower farmers. The state government is working on providing opportunities like e-marketing to farmers so that they can adapt to the rapidly changing world and earn profits by selling their crops. During this occasion, Geetika Singh, Joint Secretary of the Punjab Mandi Board, and other senior officials of the board were also present.