Research Studies

Incorporating Marketing Component in SREP

Market - driven production rather than production - propelled marketing is the order of the day. At present, the agriculture and allied departments dealing with production enhancement are totally dissociated from the marketing setup. This calls for convergence amongst agriculture and allied departments in marketing of agricultural produce. Efforts were made to realize this objective through the Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA) platform at district level. However, the marketing component did not get due importance in the Strategic Research and Extension Plan (SREP), a perspective plan from ATMA. Against this backdrop, a need was felt to incorporate the marketing component in the SREPs by bringing the production and marketing agencies on a single platform. This necessitated the current action research to expand the focus of the SREP by incorporating the marketing perspective. The study covers Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh and is expected to be completed in 2015. The objectives of the research study are:

• To understand the broad marketing scenario of the district in terms of marketing channels, storage, grading, packaging, transportation, system of wholesaling, retailing, financing, contract farming, group marketing etc.
• To develop standardized formats to assess the gaps in marketing practices, systems and infrastructure
• To come up with strategies to bridge the identified gaps for ensuring Good Marketing Practices (GMPs) in the district
• To develop a methodology for preparing an annual action plan on marketing as a component of SREP for the district
• To evolve a strategy and mechanism for better convergence between marketing and agriculture and allied departments for overcoming the existing compartmentalization.

After the initial review of literature, schedules have been prepared to collect information from different stakeholders of the agricultural marketing system such as farmers, APMCs, contract farming companies, groups – SHGs, CIGs, FIGs etc., officials, processors, retail chain players etc. These schedules were pre-tested and modified based on the feedback from the field. After detailed interaction with the district level officials of marketing, agriculture and horticulture departments in Warangal district, secondary data have been collected in respect of - APMCs functioning in the district, production pockets, marketing channels for various commodities, infrastructure facilities, budgets, market arrivals, MSP related issues, cold storages, warehouse facilities etc. A one-day workshop was held with officials of the departments concerned and a common understanding about the action research evolved. The data collection is under progress. After the data collection, the SREP for the marketing component will be drawn up by the line departments.