Price Spread Analysis of Castor in Salem and Namakkal District

Abstract

India is the world’s largest producer of castor oil, producing over 75% of the total world’s supply. Castor oil is unique owing to its exceptional diversity of applications. The oil and its derivatives are used in over 100 different applications in diverse industries such as paints, lubricants, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, paper, rubber and more. Castor oil is possibly the plant oil industry’s most underappreciated asset. This study is conducted in Salem and Namakkal district to find out the price spread among the marketing channels as well as the marketing efficiency of various marketing channels in the castor crop. Random sampling method was adopted for the study where the primary data has been collected from 100 castor farmers. Among the three marketing channels, the value chain III, namely Farmer – Processors (Oil Millers) - Retailers – Consumers was the most efficient value chain because it had the highest value chain efficiency 2.57 because it had fewer intermediaries than the other value chains.