Source: Ministry of Agriculture & farmers Welfare
The Government has launched this scheme to keep in pace with the growing production and marketing surplus.
Objectives
- To promote the creation of agricultural marketing infrastructure by providing backend subsidy support to State, cooperative and private sector investments.
- To promote creation of scientific storage capacity and to promote pledge financing to increase farmers’ income.
- To promote Integrated Value Chains (confined up to the stage of primary processing only) to provide vertical integration of farmers with primary processors.
- To use ICT as a vehicle of extension to sensitize and orient farmers to respond to new challenges in agricultural marketing.
- To establish a nation-wide information network system for speedy collection and dissemination of market information and data on arrivals and prices for its efficient and timely utilization by farmers and other stakeholders.
- To support the framing of grade standards and quality certification of agricultural commodities to help farmers get better and remunerative prices for their graded produce.
- To catalyze private investment in setting up of agribusiness projects and thereby provide an assured market to producers and strengthen backward linkages of agribusiness projects with producers and their groups.
- To undertake and promote training, research, education, extension and consultancy in the Agri marketing sector.
Sub-schemes
Following are the five sub-schemes of ISAM :
- Agricultural Marketing Infrastructure: AMI scheme is a back ended capital subsidy scheme in which rate of subsidy is 25% and 33.33% based on the category of eligible beneficiary and is provided on capital cost of the project. For the creation of Agricultural Marketing Infrastructure, Grameen Bhandaran Yojana (GBY) along with Scheme for Development/ Strengthening of Agricultural Marketing Infrastructure, Grading and Standardisation (AMIGS) are coordination. Under the Integrated Scheme for Agriculture Marketing, these two schemes are subsumed into one subscheme known as Agricultural Marketing Infrastructure.Eligible Organizations: The project for construction of rural godowns can be taken up by individuals, farmers, Group of farmers/growers, Partnership/ Proprietary firms, Non-Government Organizations (NGO’s), Self Help Groups (SHGs), Companies, Corporations, Co-operatives, Local Bodies other than Municipal Corporations, Federations, Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees, Marketing Boards and Agro Processing Corporations in the entire country. Assistance for renovation of rural godowns will, however, be restricted to godowns constructed by cooperatives only.
- Marketing Research and Information Network: The availability and dissemination of complete and accurate marketing information is the primary requirement for operational and pricing efficiency in the marketing system. In order to completely utilise the new emerging marketing opportunities for the benefit of the farming community, Agricultural Marketing Information Network is being established.
- Strengthening of Agmark Grading Facilities: SAGF aims to help the Directorate of Marketing & Inspection(DMI) to implement the Agricultural Produce Act 1937 including the meeting expenditure for the purchase of equipment, renovation and repair works in the Agmark laboratories/ Regional and Sub-offices of DMI.
- Agribusiness Development (ABD) through Venture Capital Assistance (VCA) and Project Development Facility (PDF): This facilitates in setting up of agribusiness ventures in association with every Financial Institutions that are notified by the Reserve Bank of India, where the ownership of the Central/ State Government is more than 50%. The financial institutions include nationalised banks, SBI and its subsidiaries, IDBI, SIDBI, NABARD, NCDC, NEDFi, Exim Bank, RRB and State Financial Corporation.
- Choudhary Charan Singh National Institute of Agricultural Marketing: The institution undertakes and promotes the study of applied and operational research in problem areas of agricultural marketing and to serve as a national level nodal point for co-ordination of several research studies and dissemination of technologies that are relevant to agricultural marketing across the nation
