The three pieces of legislation: Farmer’s Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) bill 2020, Farmer (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020 and the Essential Commodities (amendment) Bill, 2020 caused a serious stir among the farmers and eventually led to protests for months. These bills were hotly debated on for months and as the protest grew the issue also faced widespread coverage from international media. The three reforms regarding agricultural marketing were the reforms in the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act, the Essential Commodities Act, and on-contract farming which had been in discussion for almost two decades. The announcement of reforms in agricultural marketing by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in May, was hailed by some as the “1991” moment for agriculture. 

We organized a webinar on “Farm reforms: 1991 moments for India’s Agriculture Sector” on 6^th Dec, 2020. By December the protests were ongoing and within the next one month, it drastically gained traction forcing the government to take strong measures to keep it under check. 

The learned speaker for this webinar was Mr. Ravi Shankar Jha who has expertise in matters of policy, commerce and agriculture who is a Senior Investment and Policy Specialist and Consultant to the Ministry of Commerce, Government of India. Some of the significant points discussed in the webinar ranged from Important issues regarding the details of the legislations, their effect on the current markets, and how feasible is the government’s idea of doubling farmers’ income through these legislations.