Marketing of Chillies in Thoothukudi District of Tamilnadu

Abstract

Chilly is considered as one of the most important commercial spice crops and is widely used universal spice, named as wonder spice. The world area and production of chilly is 15 lakh hectares and 70 lakh tonnes respectively. India contributes 36% share in global production, followed by China (11%), Bangladesh (8%), Peru (8%) and Pakistan (6%). In India,Andhra Pradesh tops the list in dry chilly production (49%) followed by Tamil Nadu (23%), Maharashtra (7%), Odisa (8%) and Karnataka (16%). In Tamil Nadu, chilly is cultivated both in irrigated and rainfed conditions. During the period    2009-10, chilly was cultivated to the extent of 62006 hectares in Tamil Nadu with the production of 31230 tonnes and the average productivity during the period was 632.54 Kg/ha. Since chilly is a widely used spice in food preparation it has good demand from the processing industries. Fluctuations in market prices greatly influence the lives of thousands of chilly farmers. There is a need to study the existing marketing systems and channels and their performance in terms of efficiency.  With the above background, a study was carried out in Thoothukudi district of Tami Nadu (Major producer) with two objectives viz; i) to estimate the post-harvest losses in chilly, ii) to identify the marketing channels in chilly marketing and marketing efficiency.Considering area and production indicators, Thoothukudi district in Tamil Nadu was purposely selected for the study. Four villages in Vilathikulamtaluk were randomly selected and 15 farmers were selected randomly from each selected village and finally came up with 60 farmers. The intermediaries involved in the channel of chilly namely village traders, commission agents, wholesalers, processors and retailers numbering 43 persons were drawn from the channel. Both primary and secondary data were used for the study. The post-harvest loss for per quintal of chilly was 6.8 kilograms per quintal. There were five marketing channels identified in the study area. The price spread was Rs.3745, Rs.3295, Rs.2640, Rs.2015 and Rs.5300 for channels I, II, III, IV and V respectively. Farmer's share in consumers rupee was 50.57, 63.59, 73.39, 77.10 and 55.83 per cent of consumer's rupee in channels I, II, III, IV and V respectively. Among the five channels, channel IV was efficient according to both Acharya's approach (2.19) and Shepherd's approach (2.84).