Year: 2016 | Month: March | Volume 61 | Issue 1
Farmers response on agricultural marketing information system in Meghalaya
DOI:10.5958/0976-4666.2016.00013.9
Abstract:
Reducing knowledge gaps and sharing agricultural marketing information to farmer is an essential input for increasing productivity and boosting agricultural growth in rural areas. An attempt has been made to identify the various pattern of awareness, sources, utilization and its benefits, constraint and expectations of agricultural marketing information (AMI) among different categories of farmers in the study area of two regulated markets namely, Mawiong Regulated Market in Mylliem Block of East Khasi Hills and Garobadha Regulated Market in Selsella Block of West Garo Hills district. The sample size consisted of 120 farmers from both selected regulated market areas were selected for the study based on purposive and random sampling technique. From the findings of the research study, it was revealed that that in case of large category of sample farmers, the extent of awareness on arrivals, prices in local markets and other markets, quality / grade of produce required, post harvest handling of agricultural produce was found to be higher than small and medium size farmers. The extent of utilization of agricultural market information by different categories of sample farmers were in decision making on production, selling and post harvest handling. It was observed that the sources of agricultural market information at household level were radio, newspaper and television for small farmers. At the market level, commission agents were most predominant sources of AMI for all categories of farmers. It revealed that the market information on prices prevailed in other nearby market placed high expectations among all the categories of farmers followed by future price projections and quality wise price information. Proper integration of various agencies for adequate and efficient dissemination of vital agricultural marketing information, so that it will act as an ‘one stop solution’ for the needs of the farming community in hilly regions of Meghalaya. There is need of proper dissemination of market intelligence and information through all possible means of communication for improving the marketing efficiency.
© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
Print This Article Email This Article to Your Friend
