A Study on Economics of Marketing of Brinjal (Solanum melongena L.) in Nadia District of West Bengal

Abstract

The study on marketing of brinjal conducted in Nadia District of West Bengal discerns that the marketing of brinjal in the study area is completely dominated by the intermediaries depriving farmers to get the remunerative prices for their products and consumers are also paying higher prices. Three dominant marketing channels through which more than 70% of the total production are disposed of have been selected for the present study. Price spread of the three marketing channels taken for the study are estimated to be Rs.675.5/q, Rs.1780.00/q and Rs. 2472.10/q for channel-I, II and III respectively in which the share of net marketing margin retained by the producers /intermediaries for their services 83.65, 67.07 and 62.32 per cent of the price spread in the same sequence., i.e. the amount of price spread increases with the increase in the length of the channel. The producer’s share in the consumer’s rupee are estimated to be 81.77, 62.37 and 54.41 per cent in the same sequence indicating that the channel-I is the most efficient compared to the remaining two channels and channel-II is more efficient than channel-III. Marketing efficiency measured by applying three available methods, namely, conventional, Shepherd’s and Acharya’s are recorded to be 6.12, 3.18, 2.65; 5.49, 1.66, 1.19 and 4.49, 1.74,1.20 for the corresponding three methods for all the three channel which reaffirm the previous observation based on producer’s share in consumer’s rupee. As an efficient marketing system is supposed to safeguard the interest of all involved, a combination of traditional and modern marketing networks equipped with forward and backward linkages may be helpful in protecting the interests of all the competing stakeholders in marketing process.