In a bid to ease the disruption of agricultural supply chains, especially for perishable produce, the Agriculture Ministry has launched a Kisan Rath mobile application, which will connect farmers and traders to a network of more than 5 lakh trucks and 20,000 tractors.
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The application, developed by the National Informatics Centre, is meant to help farmers and traders who are searching for vehicles to move produce. This includes primary transport from the farm to the mandis, local warehouses or the collection centres of farmer producer organisations, as well as the secondary transport from the local mandis to intra-and inter-State mandis, processing units, railway stations, warehouses or wholesalers.
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The application will lead to on-boarding of over 5 lakh trucks through transport aggregators as well as 20,000 tractors from the custom hiring centres run by farmer groups. Refrigerated vehicles will also be available.
“It will be a stepping stone towards provision of timely transportation service at competitive rates for farmers and traders, besides achieving a reduction in food wastage,” said a Ministry statement.
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The application can be downloaded from Google Play Store.
