Constraints associated with production and marketing of high-value vegetable crops in the Varanasi District of Eastern Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

India has a wide variety of climate and soils on which a large number of Horticultural crops such as fruits, vegetables, ornamentals, medicinal and aromatic plants, plantation crops, and spices are grown. After attaining independence in 1947, the Government of India assigned a major emphasis on achieving self-sufficiency in food production, especially in cereals. The goal set by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi to double farmers’ income by 2022-23 was focused on promoting farmers’ welfare, reduce agrarian distress and bring uniformity among income of farmers and those working in non-agricultural professions. There are various areas in agriculture that can be exploited to increase farmers’ income like improvement in productivity, improvement in resource use efficiency, increasing cropping intensity, diversification towards high value crops, etc. The sample farmers revealed that as such there were many problems in the production of major vegetables. The opinion survey was conducted to know the problems faced by sample farmers in the production of major vegetables and was subjected to Garrett’s ranking technique. The major constraint faced by the farmers is production and marketing price fluctuations of the vegetables followed by storage. Price fluctuations are also the main problem faced by customers followed by high marketing cost, Labour unavailability condition and low quality of seed, lack of Transport problem, inadequate facilities in the market and poor market information were the major constraints faced by aggregators, besides price fluctuations.