Bhubaneswar: Odisha State Agricultural Marketing Board (OSAM Board) has won the SKOCH Award 2023 for eNAM in the Silver Category Agriculture. The OSAM Board under Cooperative Department has achieved a new height in the cooperative sector with the successful onboarding of all 66 Regulated Marking Committees (RMCs) of the state on the e-NAM portal.
Odisha has left many agriculturally advanced states in the country far behind and has achieved this unique feat of 100 per cent onboarding of its agricultural markets under all RMCs. Under the visionary leadership of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and state Cooperation Minister Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak, the Team Cooperation has achieved the milestone, which will immensely help the farmers of the state.
It is pertinent to mention here that e-NAM is a pan-India online platform developed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Government of India, with the aim to link all the buyers and sellers of agricultural produce, virtually, through the APMCs (Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees)/ Regulated Market Committees (RMCs).
With only 10 RMCs in the e-NAM platform in 2017, Odisha has left many agriculturally advanced states in the country far behind and has achieved the unique feat of 100% onboarding of its agricultural markets under all RMCs. Moving a step further, the department has onboarded 401 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) to the Agri-Marketing platform. About 400 Women Self Help Groups (WSHGs) can now reap the benefits of this online platform in marketing their produce as members of these FPOs. Further, to boost agricultural marketing, the Cooperation Department has initiated a project on Agri Marketing Network linking all 66 RMCs, 43 Krushak Bazars, and 76 Municipal Markets, including 800 FPOs and WSHGs. OSAM Board has entered into an agreement with the Agri-Business Incubator wing of the International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), an international organisation notified by the United Nations and the Government of India.
Cooperation Minister Nayak has congratulated the OSAM Board and Team Cooperation for the award and hoped the team will continue with the same zeal and enthusiasm maintaining transparency in accordance with the 5T mandate of governance for the benefit of farmers of the state.
