"Earning becomes remunerative if the produce reaches out-plates on time". In this context, highlight the upstream and downstream issues faced by the agriculture marketing and transport sector in India. What initiatives can be undertaken to improve the overall efficiency of the sector?

Agriculture is the interface between industry and consumptive goods providing raw materials. It has such upstream and downstream linkages. [Heading: Upstream linkages in Agricultural Marketing] 1) Upstream linkages refer to the channels of raw materials procured from the farms. Problems: 1) subsistence agriculture with little surplus => more than (45.7) of indian agriculture is intense subsistence agr. 2) small size of landholdings => small there (80.7) of landholdings are less than (2 Ha) 3) insufficient agricultural mechanisms => only (40.7) as opposed to 45.7 in USA 4) crop-failures and low yields due to climate => rainfed farming diseases, pests etc. 5) Exploitation of APMC mandis (Downstream challenges) => refers to the storage and transportation challenges. 6) Poor extension services => low levels of marketing penetration R2D etc. 7) Peer infrared structural connectivity => lack of all-weather roads to rural areas. 8) lack of storage facilities => (92,650) vcore losses due to inadly built storage.

[Box: Initiatives] 1) connecting farmers to the marketing images pred-harvest => demand exighted agriculture. 2) Increasing insurance generation for increasing risk-taking crop diversification. 3) reform of APMC mandis. 4) development of storage facilities for agri grains Eg: e-Kisan upad Nidhi. 5) connecting the rural farms with multimodal modes of transports Eg: MRIXI rail to kush Udar for eg: contract farming for incubating generative capacity of agr. Thus, upstream and downstream linkages are essential for the overall improvement of agricult UDL: