The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act 2020 allows sale and marketing of produce outside notified APMC mandis. State governments cannot collect market fee, cess or levy for trade outside the APMC markets; inter-state trade barriers are nixed and

provisions made for electronic trading of agricultural produce. No license is needed; anyone with a PAN card can buy directly from farmers. The new system provides a dispute resolution mechanism in case farmers are not paid immediately, or within three days.

The APMCs failed as they allowed vested interests to seize the system. States levied cess to earn extra revenue that was not part of the budget and was used for ‘discretionary’ development spending, mostly under the chief minister’s orders. As the cess increased,

political appointees took charge of the APMCs. Even FCI paid cess. Small farmers were burdened with the cost of transport to take their produce to the mandis, and deal with middlemen.

Under the new Act, politicians and urban elite farmers will find it difficult to get large “agricultural” incomes mandi-certified, and pay zero per cent income tax, as payments have to be made against PAN cards.

The Farmers(Empowerment and Protection)Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act,2020 regulates contractual farming rules n state APMC Acts. Farmers can make contracts with a corporate entity or wholesaler at a mutually agreed price.The system already exists in 20 States

The proposed law also states that the price of farming produce negotiated between the trader and the farmer should be mentioned in the agreement.
The buyer will be responsible for providing necessary means or inputs for good crop yield.

Under the bill, it is the responsibility of the buyer to provide agricultural equipment to the farmer.
It provides for a three-level dispute settlement mechanism: the conciliation board, Sub-Divisional Magistrate and Appellate Authority.

Finally, The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020 removes excessive controls on production, storage, movement and distribution of food commodities; removes cereals, pulses, oilseeds, edible oils, onion and potatoes from the list of essential commodities,

n paves the way for cold chain infrastructure to come up. Previously, controls regarding storage of essential commodities Henceforth,The ECA 2020 will be invoked only under extraordinary circumstances such as war, famine,natural calamity of grave nature n extraordinary price rise

The three historic legislation will unlock the overly regulated agricultural markets in the country.
The laws will provide more choices for the farmer and lessen the marketing costs for the farmers thus helping them to get better prices.

It will also help farmers of regions with surplus produce to get better prices and consumers of regions with shortages, lower prices.
The laws will enable the farmer to make use of modern technology and better inputs to enhance their farm produce and its trade.

It will reduce the cost of marketing and improve the income of farmers.
These new laws will encourage large companies, food processing firms, exporters, etc, to invest in the farm sector and source good-quality farm produce.

Farm Bills do not encroach upon in any way the APMC Act, which is an Act of the States. Farm Bills facilitate better price discovery through alternative trading channels.

Farmers have been provided adequate protection in under the farm laws. Sale, lease or mortgage of farmers’ land is totally prohibited & farmers’ land is also protected against any recovery.

Contract farming has been in implementation for decades with Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Odisha passing separate Contract Farming Acts. UPA formulated Model APMC Rules 2007.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also declared many times that both the regulated markets and the MSP are to stay in the new system. But all these declarations till now have failed in calming the ongoing unrest.

According to officials of FCI, the food grains kept at the godowns sometimes get infested by pests; also, procurement of poor quality food grains or rains or flooding and sometimes mismanagement leads to losses and damages to the food grains kept at these godowns.

The farmers, that the leftist, the Congress and their flunkies say their hearts beat for, worked their lives off to produce that.

While millions die of hunger!

Just to give you a glimpse of the amount of food that rots every year.

This Parliamentary panel report on “Agriculture Marketing” tabled on January 3rd, 2019, found 6 reasons for the bad state of India’s Agriculture.
69-73% of the rice and wheat produced in 14 years was not procured by FCI/state agencies
Shortage of APMC markets in the country

Regulated markets far off from farmers

Poor state of infrastructure in APMC markets

Poorly implemented regulations of the APMC Act

At least one gramin haat must be present in each Panchayat

Procurement of foodgrains and agricultural produce happens via the Food Corporation of India (FCI) and state government agencies. The state Agricultural Markets are run by the Government and operated by Licensed brokers, commission agents, and traders.

Only licensed operators (licensed by the state) are allowed to buy produce from the farmers.

If there is an urban retail chain that processes or sells agricultural produce. What does it do?

It procures the produce from the “licensed market operatives”.

Now get this-the Indian farmers are prohibited by law - yes, PROHIBITED BY LAW from selling is produce directly to an urban retail customer.
The farmer, who does not have the market or mandi near him or wants to sell his produce to an urban chain end-customer directly,cant do so

Ok, he can, but no more than 400 kilograms.

Do you see the cruel joke on Indian farmers that past regimes were playing?!

Why was this done?

What really happened was - a clique of middlemen in connivance with market agencies took shape. An economy, a system of monsters over generations developed. As producers and target end consumers kept dying while they profited!

Millions went hungry, even as millions of tons of foodgrains were rotting in government godowns. Grains for which the farmers had worked their lives off, always for a pittance. In a system that is controlled by a few politically connected operatives.

And, despite the farmer getting almost nothing and thousands of them committing suicides, we the consumers were paying for our food through our noses. And 7000 of us died every single day for the lack of a morsel!

This is the sick society that we have been living in India!

And, for someone in any state - Punjab or otherwise - to come and give lectures on “exploitation of farmer” and “the importance of MSP” - is not just cruel, it is devious, egregious and downright criminal.

They, who back these devious ‘protesters’ are accomplices of the psychopaths that this system survives on and is threatened by the farm bills!That is what the three Farm bills address.