BANKING TRADE AND COMMERCE

CO-OPERATIVE MARKETING

Co-operative marketing: The history of co-operative marketing in Ahmadnagar district can be traced back to the year 1909 when the first co-operative sugar factory was started in the district. The movement spread gradually and the first marketing society was established in 1954. The district has now achieved a very valuable measure of progress in the marketing of agricultural produce through co-operatives and is in the fore-front in the field of co-operative movement.

During post-Independence period the co-operative marketing movement gathered momentum under the leadership of a few eminent co-operators and has today the benefit of the services of a good cadre of co-operators. A number of co-operative organisations sell agricultural produce on behalf of the agriculturists at the market yards. They are licensed by the respective market authorities for doing adat business and they could be said to be instrumental in securing reasonable price to the agriculturists.

There are at present ten regulated markets covering most of the talukas of the district. At every regulated market there is a separate co-operative sale and purchase society. There are 14 such sale and purchase societies called Sahakari Kharedi Vikri Sangh, of which one is an apex society at the district level. These sale and purchase societies are primary marketing societies at the taluka level and alongwith a few large-size multi-purpose societies and the district purchase and sale society, they work as adatyas on the market yard and hold the licences from the respective market committees to sell the produce on behalf of the agriculturists. A special mention can be made of the Godavari and Pravara Canal Co-operative Sale and Purchase Society which has done an invaluable service to the cooperative marketing movement in the district.

There are in all 56 co-operative societies in all the regulated markets in the district doing adat business. The total turn-over of all the regulated commodities handled by these co-operative societies was 1,04,346 tonnes valued at Rs. 1,08,60,000 in the year 1968-69. The percentage of such arrivals through these co-operative societies was approximately 26 per cent of the total arrivals in the markets.

The total turn-over of trade in regulated commodities handled by the marketing co-operatives at the various market yards in 1968-69 is given in table No. 38.

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