Efficient marketing of rabi crops: some hints

摘要

For crop production to be remunerative, an efficient marketing system is necessary. Farmers can earn more, if principles of marketing are followed while selling. Wheat is the most important rabi season cereal crops of Punjab. The statistics reveal that the market arrivals of wheat in 1970-71 were 27.22 lakh tonnes, which increased to 152 lakh tonnes in 2010-11. It has been observed that in 2010-11, as high as 76 percent of wheat reached the markets. Taking an insight into the period of arrival of wheat into the market, it has been noticed that 75 to 88 per cent of the total market arrival of wheat is from mid-April to May. As a result of heavy arrival of produce with in a short span, which is due to combine harvesting of wheat crop, there is a glutof grains in the markets. The research studies have reported that 76 percent of area under wheat crop is harvested by combine harvesters. There is a wide consensus that crop production needs to be carried out in an efficient manner for increasing the production. But for making crop production remunerative an efficient marketing system needs to be ensured. Various research studies carried out in the field of marketing revealed that if selling of produce is done by properly following the principles of marketing, the farmers can surely improve the economic viability of crop production. In this article, certain steps regarding efficient marketing of crops have been discussed.