Identification and Prioritization of Constraints of Vegetable Marketing Scenario of South 24 Parganas District of West Bengal

Vegetable marketing has been affected by several production and marketing constraints, among these losses from pests, lack of quality seeds and irrigation facilities and high variation in yields. The post harvest losses are also high due to perishable nature of the product. Most of the vegetables produced in India are sold afresh. The processing structure is inadequate and value addition is low. Due to some inherent problem of poverty and constraints the small vegetable farmers have not been able to derive the same benefit of modern vegetable technologies as compared to bigger farmers. The high volume and perishability of vegetables causes several problems in their marketing. Other problems which already exist in the market are lack of marketing intelligence, price risk, delayed sale and payment, lack of processing and high cost of packaging. The different factors like literacy, fertilizer, institutional credits to agriculture, road density are observed to have positively influencing the marketing of vegetables of South 24 Parganas, West Bengal.