Agricultural marketing is a process that involves the assembling, storage, processing, packaging, transportation, grading and distribution of various agricultural products across the country. Before independence the agricultural marketing system that existed was far from satisfactory because.

• The farmers suffered from faulty weighing, while they sold their output to the traders and there was also manipulation of accounts by them.
• Ignorance of the farmers w.r.t the prevalent price also led to their exploitation.
• They also lacked proper storage facilities for their produce. As a result they could not hold back their produce for selling later, at a better/ higher price. All this led to a "wastage" of farm products on account of inadequate storage facilities.

State could intervene in the marketing aspect by adopting following measures:

1. Creating orderly and transparent marketing conditions for regulation of markets.
2. Providing physical infrastructural facilities like roads, railways, godowns, cold-storage, warehouses etc.
3. Co-operative marketing to help in realising fair price for the farmer's product. (The success mantra of the milk co-operatives at Anand in Gujarat stands a testimony to the important role of co-operatives in an economy but in the recent past, the co-operatives have received a setback.)
4. Policy instruments like:

1. Assurance of Minimum Support Price (MSP) for agricultural products.
2. Maintenance of Buffer Stocks of wheat and rice by FCI.
3. Distribution of the essential food grains and sugar through the system of Public Distribution i.e. P.D.S.