Uzhavan app adds new facility for farmers to sell produce sans charges

Officials from Agriculture department said that a new feature named e-market had been added in the ‘Uzhavan’ app where farmers can list their produces and the quantum available and traders can click on the produces to establish a direct link with farmers. Through this feature, the twin objectives of selling farm products during the time of COVID-19 and eliminating middlemen can be achieved.

After the lockdown was announced, there were initial fears of a possible food crisis but the State government acted on time providing relaxations to all farm-related activities including inter-State transportation of farm machineries.

The Chief Minister announced series of measures to promote agriculture by wavering costs that farmers had to pay to the government such as cold storage fees, market fee, warehouse fees and interests on the loan obtained by farmers by pledging their farm produces.

However, there were several constraints for farmers to transport their farm produces to market and for traders to pickup the farm products from the fields. Since the harvest season of various fruits is underway, farmers urged the State government to establish an online platform to sell their produces directly to the traders. The traders also complained about several restrictions to procure farm products during the lockdown period.

Based on the demands of the farmers and traders, the State Agriculture department developed the new

feature in the ‘Uzhavan’ app where farmers can enlist their products. Two separate tabs for farmers and traders are provided in the app so that farmers can click to upload the details of their products and traders can select the products and the quantum required for them.

Officials also said that the new feature will help traders locate farmers in their own locality so that the procurement will be made easy.