Sample Material of Our IAS Mains GS Online Coaching Programme
Subject: General Studies (Paper 3 - Technology, Economic Development, Bio diversity, Environment, Security and Disaster Management)
Topic: Storage, transport and marketing of agricultural produce and issues and related constraints
Storage, transport and marketing of agricultural produce and issues and related constraints
• Marketing is an integral part of agriculture, it encourages
‘the farmers to. invest more and increase production
• The simplest form of agricultural marketing is the buying and selling of .the
farm produce.
• However , in modern sense , the agricultural produce undergoes a series of
exchanges from one hand to another before it finally reaches the consumer.
WHAT IS AGRICULTURE MARKETING?
• According to the National Commission on Agriculture -
Agricultural marketing is a process which starts with a decision to produce a
saleable farm commodity; involves all aspects of market structure of system,
both functional and institutional, based on technical and economic
considerations and includes pre and post- harvest operations viz. assembling,
grading , storage, transportation and distribution. What is the need for
efficient agricultural marketing?Agricultural marketing and industrial marketing
:
• Long ago , India agriculture was subsistence farming . With the development of
means of transport and storage facilities, agriculture became commercial in
character and the peasants grew those crops which fetch them better prices.
• Thus, the cropping pattern is no longer dictated by what a farmer needs for
his own personal consumption but what is responsive to the market in terms of
prices received by him.
• Further, the trade is organized but farmers are not conversant with, the
complexities of the marketing system.. A- farmerish and icapped by several-
disabilities a seller and is forced to sells his produce at an unfavourable
place, time and price. ‘Due to all these there is a need of an efficient
agricultural marketing system.