Centre unveils Krishi Rath app for hassle free agri-produce movement in lockdown

PTI, Apr 17, 2020, 4:03 PM IST

New Delhi: As the harvesting of rabi crops like wheat pick up, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Friday launched the ‘Krishi Rath’ mobile app to facilitate farmers hire trucks for hassle-free transportation of agri-produce to mandis during the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown.

After downloading the Krishi Rath mobile app, farmers are required to post the quantity of agri-produce they wish to transport. They will get the availability of truck and price quote against the load request from the transport aggregators.

After confirmation, farmers will get transporters details on the app and can negotiate with transporters and finalise the deal for transportation of the produce to the mandi.

Stating that the new mobile app aims to resolve farm to mandi transportation problems, the agriculture ministry in a statement said the load posted by farmers will be visible to both traders and transporters.

The traders will get to know the farm produce for sale in their areas and they can consolidate the load posted from various farmers and arrange a truck to pick-up all such produce from the farms, it said.

Over 5.7 lakh trucks from five aggregators are listed on the app and more are expected to join, the agriculture ministry said.

Currently, Custom Hiring Centres (CHCs) offer tractors for transportation of Agri produce to the farmers in the vicinity at an optimised cost. There are over 14,000 CHC having more than 20,000 tractors.

The new system is expected to be a win-win situation for farmers, transporters and aggregators and the government.

This will benefit farmers as they will get timely service, competitive prices, rating of transporters, reduction in food wastage and better price for perishable commodities.

Transporters will benefit from higher fleet utilisation, while transport aggregators will have an enhanced market, thus helping the government create linkage to organised transport channels.

The government has exempted many of the agricultural activities including inter-state movement of farm produce from the lockdown rule, imposed to prevent the spread of deadline COVID-19 disease.