Open Data for Agricultural Market Transparency: Lessons from Uttarakhand’s Mandis using e-NAM and Agmarknet

India's agricultural markets or mandis are essential for rural livelihoods but remain fragmented, opaque, and dominated by intermediaries.

Open government datasets like AgMarknet and e-NAM offer daily mandi-level price and arrival data.

Despite being open, these datasets are underutilized due to messy formats, data gaps, and lack of tooling.

This talk presents a case study from Uttarakhand, using open data to evaluate how well hill and plain mandis are integrated via price comparisons.

The goal is to inspire the FOSS community to contribute tooling, visualizations, and open workflows that make agricultural data more usable and impactful.

Overview of agricultural markets in India and why transparency matters

Introduction to Agmarknet and e-NAM datasets

Methodology to assess price integration using open mandi data

Challenges in using public datasets such as missing values, inconsistencies, formats, quality recording.

A live use case from Uttarakhand's mandis for apples and paddy, which are perishable and non-perishable respectively.

Initiate open collaborations at the intersection of data, agriculture, and equity