Explain four measures taken by the government to improve agricultural marketing.

The Government took initiative to protect the farmers from private traders and develop rural markets. Four such measures taken by the government are as follows:

•Regulation of markets to create orderly and transparent marketing conditions which benefitted both farmers and consumers. This established fair trade practices and prevented the private traders and money lenders to exploit the farmers through faulty weighing of farmer’s produce, manipulation of their account, purchasing agricultural produce at very low prices due to farmers’ inadequate information on prevailing market prices or in any other manner.

•Improving and developing infrastructure facilities like roads, railways, transport, warehousing, cold storages and processing units. This prevented the farmers from selling their produce at low costs because of lack of storage facilities. It will still take longer for infrastructure to develop completely.

•Co-operative marketing which helps the farmers realise a fair price for their products. It received a major setback due to lack of coverage from farmers.

•Safeguarding interests of the farmers by initiating certain policies like minimum support prices for agricultural products, maintaining and storing buffer stock of food grains and establishing a Public Distribution System to distribute food grains and other products. These instruments protected the farmers’ income and also provided food to the poor at a subsidized rate.

The initiatives taken by the Government has helped in rapid development of agricultural marketing. The Government is taking continuous measures in their Annual Budget including the current Budget 2018 to focus on improving farmers’ conditions and the overall development of rural sector. The farmers need better awareness and training to improve their market ability and help achieve the growth faster.