Role of technology in market information systems

Marketing of agricultural produce is an important economic activity to balance the affordability and availability of food for consumers with sustained improved incomes to farmers. Although the marketed surplus of the Indian farmer is as high as 90% for most commodities, the returns do not seem to be high. Food inflation has been a major cause of anxiety within the policy circles. The influence of global commodity cycles on domestic prices of agricultural produce adds to its complexity. This necessitates a critical review of agricultural marketing scenario of the country that involves multiple dimensions. The government has played an important role in price stabilization through market intervention. Numerous rules and regulations related to food safety, transportation, weights and measures, food standards, have been brought in to protect the interests of producers and consumers. The study proposes to develop institutions to bring farmers together, establish direct links between farmers and retailers, processors and consumer, and develop competitive transparent markets. It also draws experiences of the industry and contexts outside traditional agricultural marketing archetype. E-commerce especially on B2C side can be a potential instrument in bringing producers and consumers much closer through disintermediation. A nonconventional marketing channel like E-trading platform can be helpful in bringing transparency in pricing by removing the information asymmetry between sellers and buyers and enable them to benefit from price discovery. Farmer producer organization, direct marketing initiatives such as contract farming, technology-enabled, seamless markets such as eNAM are such examples. Among the different goals of SDGs in order to effectively attend a common platform for the betterment of farmers and to improve the situation of the existing marketing situation in country, there is utmost need to revive the marketing practices, technological use and regulatory practices.