NEW DELHI: India's ambitious e-NAM (pan-India electronic trading portal for agriculture commodities) has made a new beginning this month with farmers in four states entering into inter-state trading for the first time to get the best price for their produce by looking beyond their respective 'mandis' (regulated market) or states.It, however, took nearly three years to break the states' barrier - an ultimate objective of the e-platform which was launched to create a unified national market for farm commodities in April 2016.The very first inter-state transaction on e-NAM in the country had been recorded between farmers of Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh and Haldwani in Uttarakhand for trade in tomatoes earlier this month followed by similar trades in groundnut between farmers of Gadwal Mandi in Telangana and Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh on January 19."It's certainly quite encouraging. We have introduced a new license for 'clearing & forwarding' (CLF) agents to take responsibilities of inter and intra state trade," said Lakshmi Bai, director of agricultural marketing, Telangana government.She told TOI on Wednesday that such a move would be quite beneficial for farmers of one state if demand of their produce is quite high in other states even after factoring in storage and transportation cost.Asked about the critical component of transportation in inter-state trade, she said, "The CLF agents will have to take responsibility of storage, quality and transportation as per the requirement of distant buyer."The move has added a new chapter in agricultural marketing in the country where such trades in 124 farm commodities is currently possible in 585 mandis on common e-market platform in 16 states and two UTs.These states and UTs are: Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh , Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Jharkhand, Odisha , Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu , West Bengal, Puducherry and ChandigarhIt will further be expanded to more mandis in other states and UTs in future as the Centre has planned to integrate another 415 regulated markets with the e-NAM portal by March 2020. All big regulated markets (nearly 2,500) are expected to be on such platform by 2022.The e-NAM platform provides single window services for all agri market related information and services. This includes commodity arrivals, quality, prices, buying and selling offer, e-payment settlement directly into farmers' account and details of "logistic providers" who can facilitate transportation of commodities after trading.Though trade on e-NAM initially started inside individual e-NAM mandi during 2016-17, the farmers had moved to inter-mandi trade in 10 e-NAM states last year. The inter-state trade was the next logical step which has now become possible in four states - UP, Uttarakhand, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.