NIC to set up 20 more Agmarknet nodes in AP

Agmarknet provides the farmers an easy access to commodity-wise and variety-wise daily prices and arrivals information of various wholesale markets spread across the country.

The portal's database tracks information related to over 300 commodities and about 2000 varieties that get transacted in the markets.

At present, around 735 agriculture produce wholesale markets, out of the 7000 market centers in the country, are connected to the portal.

Of them 54 are located in the state. In addition to these centres, the three Directorate of Marketing & Inspection (DMI) offices in the state also have connectivity with the portal.

"We are planning to connect 406 more markets by the end of this fiscal. Another 2000 markets will be connected in the next five years," P K Suri, the national project director (Agmarnet), told Business Standard.

Launched about 18 months back, the portal has so far received over 73,000 hits. "We are planning to translate the content in the portal into other Indian languages. To begin with, the Hindi version will be added within the next one month, which will be followed by a South Indian language. We expect the site visits to improve dramatically with the introduction of regional versions," Suri said.

The portal is linked to the Tradeniconline and the trade resource websites of NIC, which offer a wide range of value-added data dissemination services to its members through Internet.

The portal also provides a common platform for the export promotion organisations, commodity boards, regulatory bodies and trade and industry associations for collection and dissemination of value-added information.

Linkages have been provided to trade facilitating organisations comprising buyers, brokers and indenting agents, clearing and forwarding agents, courier services, export-import consultants, packers, movers and haulage services, shipping companies etc.

These linkages are further being strengthened using the e-commerce programme under Dacnet project of the department of agriculture and cooperation, Suri said.

"We have recently started providing weather information too through the portal by linking it to weather resource system of NIC," Suri added.

Information related to all India weather conditions, weather forecast, climate, rainfall, temperature, soil moisture etc is made accessible. Market-related information such as market fee, market charges, costs, method of sale, payment, weighment, handling, market functionaries, laws etc are also being published in the form of market profiles and GIS-based thematic maps.