With the noble objective of ensuring a fair price to farmers, the Indian government established autonomous bodies called APMCs - or Agricultural Produce Market Committees - in various parts of the country. Every APMC is literally a centralized market place - a meeting point for sellers, buyers and agents. The committee is responsible for providing the required infrastructure as well as preventing unfair trade practices by functionaries.

APMCs regulate the wholesale selling of agricultural produce in their defined area of operation. The aim of regulating the market functioning was to introduce/establish an open & transparent trading environment wherein the sellers (who are mostly farmers) would bring their agricultural produce in the market to sell in open auctions. The complete process of such sale including the auction, weighment, grading, payment and temporary storage then would be controlled by a regulating body represented by the democratically elected members. Moreover, even the behavior of the functionaries operating in the market area would be closely monitored. Updated information about the total inflow of various agricultural commodities, their prices, month-wise demand/supply position would be easily available.

As times have changed and as India moves towards a more liberalized agri-trade environment, the APMCs are also gradually beginning to redefine their objective as facilitators of trade. Thus, some of them such as the Mumbai APMC, Azadpur APMC (in Delhi) and Bangalore APMC have taken the lead in establishing modern infrastructure and facilities, offering export guidance and support and so on.

The above mentioned APMCs are amongst the largest in Indian APMCs, though by far, Mumbai APMC is the largest - in fact it is today the largest regulated market in the whole of Asia.