Objectives of Regulated Marketing:

♤ To prevent exploitation of farmers by helping them overcome the handicaps in the marketing of their produce through ensuring correct weightment of produce, prompt payment to the farmers, etc.

♤ To make the marketing system effective and efficient so that farmers may get remunerative prices for their produce and the goods are made available to consumers at reasonable cost.

♤ Elimination of the unhealthy and unscrupulous practices, reducing marketing

costs, and providing facilities to the producer-seller in the market.

♤ To provide incentive prices to farmers for inducing them to increase the production both in terms of quantity and quality.

♤ To promote an orderly marketing of agricultural produce by improving the infrastructure facilities.

There are thousands of rural periodic markets, such as “haats”, and more than 7000 government regulated APMCs, besides initiatives of numerous cooperative development, and private corporate sector that engage with farmers directly or indirectly. The government has also played an important role in price stabilization through market intervention. Numerous rules and regulations related to food safety, transportation, weights and measures, food standards, and so on were also brought in to protect interests of producers and consumers. However, over the last one or two decades, newer needs such as increasing volumes of output, greater horticultural production, price disparity across markets have compelled a review of the APMC system.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare made attempts to overhaul the regulatory system by proposing the Model APMC Act, 2003 and Model State/UT Agricultural Produce and Livestock Marketing (Promotion & Facilitation) Act, 2017. Notwithstanding some reluctance on the part of different State governments, there now seems to be a consensus that agricultural marketing needs to be reformed and liberalized.