After halting the Centre’s decision on foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail, West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee is in the process of opening up the state’s backend retail sector to the private sector.
The Banerjee administration is in the process of coming up with amendments on the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee Act (APMC) Act, which will allow free intra state movement of agriculture produce.
A response to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's appeal, the proposed amendment can even allow “contract farming” in the state, with certain “safeguards” for farmers.
“As, the centre has asked for several times in recent times, we are looking into the possibility of amending the APMC Act. But nothing has been finalised yet,” State griculture marketing minister Arup Roy said
However, Roy clarified, although the state is in favour of free movement of agriculture produce, it is opposed to the idea of “contract farming” in its present form.
“We are ideally opposed to the idea of contract farming as suggested in the Centre's model act. Some private players are doing this on their own, we do not want to interfere into that. But, we have clearly refused to accept the model Act of the Centre. There should more safeguards for farmers as our priority is to ensure farmers' interest,” he added.
In February, earlier this year in a conference of chief secretaries of states, Prime Minister had asked the states to amend the act. There was also a written communication from the Union Agriculture Ministry to West Bengal government on this recently.
As part of the proposed amendment to the APMC Act, the government might allow a unified license for buying and selling across the districts of Bengal. However, private mandis, which form a crux of the model APMC law, have been omitted from the Bengal version.
The state government had asked Keventer Agro, for a report on the draft amendment of the APMC Act. This was submitted last year.
“We have long been waiting for the amendment of the APMC Act. In the draft we recommended that a universal license apply to procurement and sales across districts in Bengal,” said Mayank Jalan, MD, Keventer.
Besides this, in the proposed amendment, the state government is also considering additional safeguards to secure farmer rights.
One of the key safeguards is the deletion of the provision that in case of an inability on the part of the marketing board to acquire requisite land, the state government can step in and acquire the farmer’s land.
“We will look at the amendment of the act, but we will never allow big corporations to come from outside to come and control the supply chain,” state commerce and industries minister, Partha Chatterjee has earlier told Business Standard.Given this context, the state government is considering a partnership farming model-a possible innovation over the cooperative farming model that was earlier proposed by the erstwhile Left Front government.Pepsico already has a contact farming operation in the Howrah district of West Bengal, where it controls the entire supply chain.
