Factors Determining Marketing of Paddy during COVID-19 Regime in Andhra Pradesh

Abstract

Rice is the major food crop in India. In Andhra Pradesh during COVID-19, marketing of rice was affected by many factors like lack of accessibility to market, scarcity of labour and high transportation cost which led to farmgate sales and resulted in the reduction of farmers income. Multistage sampling was used for the study. In the context of India, the state of Andhra Pradesh was selected for the study as it is one of the top grower of rice, from this state, the West Godavari district was chosen as it is the top grower of rice, followed by the selection of three mandals within the district. Further, two villages were picked from each mandal, with the criteria based on paddy cultivation area. Around 120 farmers from these selected villages were then chosen to gather essential information. Ordinal logistic regression was used to evaluate the factors determining marketing of paddy during COVID-19 using STATA software. The study revealed that non-availability of storage facility, labour scarcity and availability of transportation facility were the major factors which influenced the marketing of paddy during COVID-19 regime. Marketing of produce can be done through formation of effective Farmer Producer Organizations (FPO) by Strengthening the market linkages.