Marketing systems and spatio-temporal price behaviour of selected vegetables at different market points linked to Dumre-Besishahar road corridors
Ram Chandra Bastakoti

The monitoring of market for selected vegetables was carried out in four selected market points. The aspects covered included: kinds of vegetables supplied, varieties, sources of supply to the market and the places to where vegetables are supplied from the market, pricing mechanism, prices of different vegetables, quantity of different vegetables traded. These information were gathered at three day interval on a regular basis throughout the entire project period. The data on prices and quantity traded were gathered at various identified levels of marketing systems such as whole-selling, and retailing. The data on prices included both acquisition and selling prices. The data was collected by employing well-structured formats. The data so gathered were entered into the computer in the Excel software and analysed using the SPSS computer software. The data analysis was focused mainly on the price behaviour across the time and space.

This study found that most of the produce in the study area were disposed in the different local markets. They transported their produced in doko after harvesting to these markets and sold either to retailer or consumer. The involvement of wholesaler was also found in the study area. In the study area there was no specific type of packaging, grading and processing practices. Besides, farmers were marketing their produce individually and was not any type of group marketing.

The analysis of price behaviour of different vegetable indicted that there is low price during the peak period of harvesting of vegetables due to the competition among different vegetables coming from different sources. If we look at the price received by farmers in different vegetables it shows that there is great difference between retail price and farm gate price. This was mainly due to inefficient marketing system.