NEW DELHI: Responding to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi ’s call for using ‘truck aggregators’ to connect farmers with mandis, the agriculture ministry on Friday launched ‘Kisan Rath’ mobile App to facilitate transportation of foodgrains and perishables across the country during the lockdown period.Developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), the App will help farmers and traders in searching transport vehicles for movement of agriculture & horticulture produce covering both ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ transportation.The primary transportation would include movement of harvested produce from farn to mandis (agri markets), farmer producer organisations’ (FPOs) collection centres and warehouses while secondary transportation would cover movement from one mandi to other Intra-state and inter-state mandis, processing units, and from one warehouse to other warehouse.This Android version of App, having tagline “Kisan ka apna Vahan”, will also facilitate traders in transportation of perishable commodities by reefer (refrigerated) vehicles.“At this juncture while the country is passing through the COVID-19 situation, this ‘Kisan Rath’ App will greatly facilitate farmers, FPOs and cooperatives in the country to have the choice to find a suitable transport facility to transfer their agriculture produce from farm gate to markets,” said Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar Many ground reports, reaching the ministry, show that the farmers have been facing problems in transporting not only of fruits & vegetables but also of mustard despite having good crop of oilseeds. Even oil processing mills informed the ministry about not getting supplies despite having good harvest of mustard.The Prime Minister, during his interaction with Union ministers via video conference, had on April 6 underlined such problems and asked them to harness technology and explore innovative solutions like using ‘truck aggregators’ on the lines of app based cab services (such as Uber and Ola) to ensure smooth movement of farm produce.Explaining functioning of the App, an official said the consignors (farmer, FPOs, buyer/ trader) can place a requirement for transportation which would be disseminated to transport aggregators in the market, who can in turn interface with various truckers and fleet owners for obtaining a competitive quote against the requirement and pass back the quote and trucker details to the consignors.“The consignors will then directly negotiates off line with the trucker and finalise the deal. Once the trip is completed, the users can provide a rating/ feedback for the trucker in the App which, over a period of time, may become a feedback mechanism for the transporter to improve their services,” he said.In order to facilitate seed sector during lockdown period, the government has, meanwhile, agreed to extend the validity of license of seed dealers which are expired or going to be expired by September 30.“It has also been decided to extend the validity of import permissions till September, 2020 after consideration of the requirement of seed/planting material of the importing parties,” said the ministry in a statement.These decisions and efforts to ensure transportation of farm produce may ease the functioning of this sector to a large extent during the lockdown period. But, there are still some practical issues on the ground which need to be addressed.Flagging the problems being faced by the mustard oil industry, Vivek Puri , managing director, Puri Oil Mills Limited, said, “There was a sigh of relief for the industry as mustard oil was placed in the essential items category. However, various practical problems cropped up – the basic one being the lack of inflow of raw material that is oilseed from mustard producing states because of confusion in inter-state transportation.“One such issue is that mustard oil cake (a by-product) is used as cattle feed but there is ambiguity about whether this is an essential item or not. Because of these two reasons, the optimum capacities of the facilities were not fully utilised.”Besides, he said, “labour availability still remains a major concern” in spite of all the support from both the central and state governments.He said, “This problem persisted despite having the necessary passes and permissions, because in some cases, the family members were worried and did not allow workers to step out of their homes.”Puri believes that the entire process will take three to four weeks to streamline even as the government is trying hard to alleviate the hurdles.“The new mustard crop, which is generally harvested during this time every year, is expected to be very good. Due to the arrival of the new crop at this time, ideally the prices of mustard seed should have dropped leading to drop in mustard oil prices. However, on the contrary, the prices have risen due to these disruptions, effecting adversely cost sensitive industry and the consumers alike,” he said.