Development Policies and Agricultural Markets

Agricultural marketing in India suffers from inefficiency, a disconnect between the prices received by producers and the prices paid by consumers, fragmented marketing channels, poor infrastructure and policy distortions. Urgent reforms are needed to address these inadequacies and check the excesses of middlemen. While encouraging new models that improve the bargaining power of producers and scaling up successful experiments, producers' companies and cooperative marketing societies could be promoted to provide alternative avenues for sale of produce. Meanwhile, price policy has to be reoriented to bring it in tune with the emerging demand and supply of various crops. Though the private sector is vital to improving efficiency, the public sector is equally essential to serve the larger social goal of maintaining price stability through market operations.