What is NAFED?
- National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED) is an apex organization of agricultural produce marketing cooperatives.
- It is registered under the Cooperative Societies Act and is one of the largest procurers as well as marketing agency of agricultural products in India.
- The headquarter is in New Delhi and it has 4 regional offices and 28 zonal offices.
- By extension, NAFED’s network stretched to 4 zones – the North Zone, the East Zone, the South Zone and the West Zone.
What are the functions of NAFED?
- To facilitate the marketing and trading of agricultural commodities.
- To facilitate the procurement of inputs for agriculture such as seeds, fertilisers, implements etc.
- To provide warehousing facilities for the agricultural produce generated.
- To act as an insurance agent for agricultural produce.
- To act as an agent to the government in procurement and to collaborate with international agencies for the development of the cooperative market in agricultural produce.
Schemes Implemented by NAFED
- Honey Farmer Producer Organisation Programme – a central sector scheme to create robust infrastructure for processing honey and allied products, good supply chain for storage and marketing and skill development in holistic beekeeping.
- Launch of Madhukranti portal.
- It is also the nodal agency for implementing the price stabilization scheme under Operation Greens.
- It has also been instrumental in the establishment of the National Spot Exchange, a commodities exchange.
- Helps in fulfilling the mandate of the Price Support Scheme and Market Intervention Scheme through timely procurements.
- NAFED has launched nearly 90 new organic products in the name of “Organic Soul” starting from seeds like flax seeds, chia seeds, tea, flour, pulses in the market.
Food Corporation of India and NAFED
Though the functions of both NAFED and FCI appear similar at first, the main difference is that FCI deals with procurement and distribution of rice, wheat and coarse grains only. NAFED, on the other hand, deals with pulses and oil seeds procurement and distribution.
