Union Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare Minister Radha Mohan Singh on Thursday denied that farmers and rabi crop sowing were being impacted adversely by the demonetisation.
“It is such a huge decision that some inconvenience being caused is quite natural. Opposition to demonetisation is equivalent to supporting black money, terrorism and fake currency. People should refrain from taking political benefit of this issue,”said Singh.
The minister said that farm produce worth Rs 3841 crores had been traded through the electronic-Nationalal Agriculture Market(e-NAM) in the first eight days of the prime minister deciding to scrap all currency notes in the Rs 500 and Rs 1000 denominations. According to him, 5.5 lakh farmers sold their produce; 54,000 trades made purchases and 28,000 commission agents registered themselves with e-NAM in the last one week.
Inaugurating an ASSOCHAM conference on “Linking Farmers with the Market”, Singh said,
“We had started this as a pilot project, and have tried to remove all the anomalies related to hardware and software, and it is now moving very fast towards empowering farmers to allow them to sell their produce.”
Gurugram, Haryana's millennium city on the outskirts of the national capital will soon be a hub for flowers, while Sonipat and Panipat will be made the hub for vegetables and Karnal for indigenous cow's milk, said the union minister .
He pointed out that while the Chinese capital with twice the population of Delhi was sourcing everything from within a150 kms radius, milk from Andhra Pradesh and vegetables from Kolkota were the norm in the Indian capital.
The government was now working towards setting up hub centres for providing milk, eggs, fruits, vegetables, flowers and the like from near metros as part of the online trading platform.
