BeAM inks pact to enhance smallholder farmers' income in Maharashtra

BSE E Agricultural Markets (BeAM) on Tuesday signed a pact with Haridra Lakshmi to enhance the smallholder farmers' income in Maharashtra. In this regard, the two entities have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU), BSE said in a statement.

Leading stock exchange BSE in December 2020 launched BeAM, an electronic spot platform for agricultural commodities.

The MoU aims to bring the benefit of globally competitive market technologies to enhance the efficiency of physical markets represented by these institutions in areas such as knowledge sharing, education and training and related events, the exchange said.


Both entities will work closely with the warehouses in the region to adopt electronic negotiable warehouse receipts (eNWRs). Thus, the pact will enable both parties to instil collaboration with meaningful outcomes for the smallholder farmers (SHFs).

Further, both entities would work closely with institutions that have direct and deep connect with the farmers in the state. These include Godavari Urban Multistate Credit Co-Op Society Ltd, Surya Farmer Producer Company and Tukai Agro Farmer Producer Company.

These institutions and companies collectively have a significant presence in various states, including Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Gujarat.

Their members are also engaged in retail sale and trade of various commodities, including turmeric, cotton, maize and soybean.

"The MoU shows that it is possible to bring the benefit of cutting-edge market technologies to smallholder farmers (SHF). Physical spot market participants would immensely benefit from such an initiative thus helping farmers get the most competitive prices for their produce," BeAM CEO Rajesh Sinha said.

Hemant Sriram Patil, Member of Parliament, said that this MoU would enable the farmer producer companies and farmers to get the benefit of cutting-edge market technologies of BSE. Turmeric farmers would benefit immensely from it.

"We are also working on enhancing the processing capacity of Turmeric in the region," he added.

BeAM would work closely with the small holders' farmers associated with these institutions and enable them to trade electronically, thus helping them move to more organised forms of trading.

The farmers will be enabled for "objective quality-based trading, credit linkages, electronic warehouse receipts and forward markets", thus enhancing their competitiveness in the market, leading to the most competitive price realisation, the exchange said.