Articles by Kushankur Dey

The electronic spot market has introduced technological innovations to agricultural commodity market trading through the electronic National Agriculture Market. To assess the role of the electronic spot market in price discovery, this paper explores the price efficiency test between select commodities’ spot and futures markets. While we find that the spot plays an instrumental role in price formation and transmission in selected markets, eNAM is yet to augment price-setting for farmers. We propose improvisations in the spot market design that align institutional structures, governance mechanisms and incentives and strengthen spot market infrastructure to enhance farmer participation.

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For farmer producer companies, the determinants of performance and viability are governance structure; network with external agencies; access to capital and technology; member–producers’ contribution to business; and financial performance. These companies can become viable if they follow the stakeholder strategy for cooperation and orientation to marketing of members’ produce and business expansion. Farmer producer companies can benefit if robust performance metrics based on these determinants of performance and viability are developed; these metrics influence policymakers and apex agencies; and there is a bottom-up approach in implementation and convergence between promoting agencies and financial institutions.

The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (during kharif 2016) and Weather-based Crop Insurance Scheme (kharif 2007–kharif 2014) are assessed by considering a set of performance indicators, namely average sum insured per insured cropped area, percentage of loanee and non-loanee farmers covered, average area insured per farmer, total claim ratio, farmer claim ratio, premium as percentage of sum insured, gross profit to insurance agencies. The study finds that claim payout can increase farmers’ coverage under PMFBY while subsidy and actuarial premium rate significantly impact farmers’ coverage for WBCIS. However, as recourse to complement the performance of two schemes, we propose a total insurance package like seed insurance through replanting guarantee programme, crop cycle insurance, prepaid insurance card, to name a few.

The creation of the National Agricultural Market in India is a welcome move against the backdrop of the agricultural produce marketing committee reforms, 2013 and APMC Model Act 2003. With the twin objectives of spot price discovery and real-time price dissemination, the NAM is aimed at introducing a technology-enabled trading environment at regulated markets and integrate primary and secondary markets at the regional and national levels. To improvise the market structure, appointing a diverse and discursive group of market agencies/service providers is essential.