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ABSTRACT
Agricultural marketing has always been a major challenge for the farmers in the country due to market fragmentation, multi-level charges and multiple stakeholders. To overcome these barriers from trade e-NAM was launched by government of India in April, 2016. It is an electronic trade portal to integrate Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) madis under ‘One Nation, One Market’. During COVID-19 pandemic, to reduce the congestion in the wholesale mandis the government added some new features to the portal which were believed to provide a good opportunity for online sale amidst lockdown. Over 150 commodities are being traded in this platform consisting of various agricultural and horticultural crops. This scheme has high implication for the farmers, traders, buyers, exporters and processors particularly in the unprecedented period of COVID-19 pandemic simply by altering demand-supply dynamics. The disease has affected harvesting of agricultural produce and marketing which could be reduced up to an extent by using the online platform. However, the government should take strict measures to reduce the issues of transparency and operations under the scheme.

Keywords: e-NAM, Agricultural Marketing, COVID-19, APMC

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e-NAM Linking farmers to digital market amid Covid-19 pandemic (1)_compressed.pdf