On 15th May 2020, The Ministry of Agriculture announced that the e-NAM reached target 1000 mandis across the nation in 18 states and 3 union territories(UTs) with 38 new mandis integrated with the e-NAM platform of electronic agriculture trading portal. Key Points:

i.The 38 new mandis include 19 from Madhya Pradesh, 10 from telangana, 4 from Maharashtra and one each in Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir.

ii.e-NAM launched in 2016 to create a network of Mandis as a common online market platform as ‘one nation, one market’ for agricultural commodities became a tool for social distancing in the global pandemic lockdown.

iii.The states and UTs are promoting the platform to reduce the human intervention in trading and handling of produce online. iv.The registered user base of e-NAM consists of 1.66 crore farmers, 1,31,000 traders and 1000 Farmers Producers Organisations.

e-NAM: i.The e-NAM was aimed to reduce transaction costs, bridging information asymmetries and to help in expansion of market access for the farmers and stakeholders. ii.e-NAM is implemented by the Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.

iii.The e-NAM has 3 new modules named Farmer Producer Organisation (FPO) tradingmodule Warehouse based electronic Negotiable Warehouse Receipts(e-NWRs) Module Logistics Module