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An Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) is a marketing board established by state governments in India to ensure farmers are safeguarded from exploitation by large retailers, as well as ensuring the farm to retail price spread does not reach excessively high levels. APMCs are regulated by states through their adoption of a Agriculture Produce Marketing Regulation (APMR) Act.[1]
Prior to independence in 1947, the major concern of government policy related to agricultural marketing was to keep the prices of food for the consumers and agro-raw materials for the industry in check. However, after independence, there came a need to protect the interest of farmers and to provide them incentive prices to augment the production of agricultural commodities. Common throughout the country were problems of local money lenders extorting high amounts of foodgrains from the farmer, at throwaway prices, as interest. Recognizing the defects that farmers faced—such as losses in terms of undue low prices, higher costs of marketing, and considerable physical losses of the produce in the agricultural marketing system—the Indian Government introduced several mandatory regulations in hopes of establishing a mechanism to monitor the market conduct. Regulation and development of primary agricultural produce markets was taken up as an institutional innovation, and construction of well laid out market yards was considered as an essential requirement for regulating the practices in primary wholesale markets.