Production and Marketing of Vegetables

Production and Marketing of Vegetables

1. Introduction

Thus so far we examined the production and marketing system of vegetables in the State of Bihar and also analysed the economics of cultivation and the profitability of vegetable crops. The efficiency of vegetable marketing system especially in regard to marketing costs and margins and the vegetable grower's share in consumer's rupee has been extensively discussed. The exhaustive study on the marketing aspect of vegetables is most desirable as being observed that vegetable marketing system in Bihar is highly inefficient causing deprivation of the farmers to get remunerative prices for their vegetable crops. Vegetables being labour intensive crops, if these are not efficiently marketed particularly at prices that meet farmer's cost of production, his enthusiasm gets dampened, adoption of modern production technology and use of non-conventional inputs declines and production suffers setbacks. Keeping in view these facts the task before us is not only to summarise the findings of the study but also to suggest a set of recommendations so that the expectations of achieving the goals of developing efficient marketing system for vegetables could be achieved.

2. Study Method

Both the primary and secondary sources of data are used to examine production and marketing system of vegetables in Bihar. The secondary sources of data pertain to have an idea on area and production of different vegetables in the State. The primary data are collected at the farm households level in regard to all important aspects of vegetables production and its marketing.

Six important vegetables commonly grown in the selected districts have been opted for the present study. The vegetables selected are potato, tomato, brinjal, cabbage, cauliflower and ladyfinger. Following the terms of reference one district from each agro-climatic zone has been purposively selected following the criteria of largest proportion of vegetable area in the district. As such, six districts having the largest proportion of area in the concerned agro-climatic zones have been selected. For making the study cross-sectional representative the randomly selected farmers from each selected village of the districts have been grouped into four groups namely, marginal (upto 1.0 ha), small (1.0 to 2.0), medium (2.0 to 4.0) and large (above 4.0 ha). Thus, a total number of 379 farmers comprising 120 marginal, 109 small, 79 medium and 71 large are selected for the study.

The simple tabular approach has been used for analysis. This is also used for calculating cost of cultivation, cost of production and returns from cultivation based on the cost accounting method. The marketing efficiency has been examined with the help of analysis of price-spread and estimation of marketing costs and margins.

3. Socio-Economic Base

The socio-economic base of the farmers has significant bearing on their farm business. The findings indicate that the average size of holding is 1.80 ha, a strong possibility of the economic viability of the majority of the farms.

The small farm size classes have large number of farm workers meaning thereby that agriculture is the main occupational activity. The children are also reported to be engaged in farm activities particularly in small farm size. In regard to family composition, the problem of overpopulation and excessive pressure on land cannot be ruled out. This is found in all categories of farms. So far literacy rate is concerned, the results indicate that the smallest farm size group has the highest proportion of illiteracy (49.05). When taken together all farm households 40.62 per cent are illiterate. An analysis of farm income shows that agriculture is the main source of income. The income from vegetable is higher in small farm size groups than the large farm size group. This means that small farmers very widely practice cultivation of vegetables on their land irrespective of their small size of land. It is further reported that gross annual income per hectare of vegetable crop land is highest in case of marginal farms. In totality also, the cultivation of vegetable crops is more profitable than food crops.

4. Cultivation and Production

From the foregoing analysis of the cultivation and production of vegetables it is found that cropped vegetables area account for 29.57 per cent on marginal, 16.85 per cent on small, 14.67 per cent on medium and 11.17 per cent on large farms. This means that land holding size is inversely related with the vegetable area. As indicated earlier also, marginal