Agricultural Marketing in Hills:A Socio-Economic Analysis of Rajmash Marketing under North-Western Himalayan Region of J&K

The Himalayan region extends all along the Northern boundary of India. The diverse ecohabitat of Himalayan region hosts a wide range of plant diversity as well as crop diversity on which native people rely for their food and nutritional security. Traditionally, agriculture on hills was practiced on a subsistence basis but, with the development of means of transport, storage facilities and other infrastructure, hill agriculture has become commercial in character. The present study has been carried out in Bhaderwah and Bhalla blocks of Doda district of J&K state which fall in the North-Western Himalayan region of J&K state. A sample of 100 farmers was drawn for the present study which comprised of 78 marginal farmers, 14 small farmers and 8 medium farmers. Primary data were used to analyze the results.The results revealed that both marketable surplus as well as marketed surplus was higher in case of medium farmers followed by small farmers and marginal farmers. It was found that three types of marketing channels mainly channel-I (Producer - Village Trader - Retailer – Consumer), channel-II (Producer – Retailer – Consumer) and channel-III (Producer – Consumer) were involved in the marketing of Rajmash in the study area. The total marketing cost and marketing margin was found higher in channel-I followed by channel-II and channel-III. The results also indicated that the marketing efficiency of channel-III (1.85) was highest as compared to channel-II (1.44) and channel-I (1.28) and the producer’s share in consumer’s rupee was also maximum in channel-III (97.51 %) followed by channel-II (82.49 %) and channel-I (76.25 %) in the study area.