Marketing of Fruits and Vegetables in India: A Study Covering the Ahmedabad, Chennai and Kolkata Markets

There has been concern in recent years regarding the efficiency of marketing of fruits and vegetables, and that this is leading to high and fluctuating consumer prices and only a small share of the consumer rupee reaching the farmers. Marketing of horticultural crops is complex especially because of perishability, seasonality and bulkiness. The study seeks to examine different aspects of their marketing, focusing particularly, on the wholesale markets for fruits and vegetables which have been established to overcome deficiencies and improve the marketing efficiency. Results indicate that in Ahmedabad the direct contact between commission agents and farmers is very low. For vegetables this is 50 percent and for fruits only 31 percent. Further, in the system of transaction, secret bidding and simple transaction dominate and open auction is relatively rare. In KFWVM, Chennai, the wholesalers act as commission agents and receive consignments directly from producing centers through agents or producers. By and large the system of transaction remains traditional and open auction is rarely seen. This is one major reason for poor efficiency. However, in the small AUS market in Chennai, the farmers sell directly to consumers. The share of farmers in the consumer rupee in Ahmedabad was 41.1 to 69.3 percent for vegetables and 25.5 to 53.2 percent for fruits. In Chennai KFWVM, the farmers share was 40.4 to 61.4 percent for vegetables and, 40.7 to 67.6 percent for fruits. In the small AUS market in Chennai, where the farmers sell directly to the consumers, the share of farmers was as high as 85 to 95.4 percent for vegetables. This indicates that if there are few or no middlemen, the farmers’ share could be much higher. In the Kolkata market the share of farmers ranged from 45.9 to 60.94 percent for vegetables and 55.8 to 82.3 percent for fruits. Thus, the shares are frequently very low, but somewhat better in Chennai, lower in Kolkata and even lower in Ahmedabad. The margin as a percentage of farmer-consumer price difference (an efficiency measure) shows that in Ahmedabad, the margins are very high and range from 69 to 94 percent. In Chennai they range from 15 to 69 percent, and in Kolkata they range from 46 to 73 percent. The high percentage of margin to farmer-consumer price difference is indicative of large inefficiencies and relatively poor marketing efficiency. There is great need to improve the marketing of fruits and vegetables. One important measure would be to bring more markets under regulation and supervision of a well-represented market committee. Another measure would be the promotion and perhaps enforcement of open auctions in the markets. Yet another measure could be efforts to bring more buyers and sellers into the markets, bringing them closer to perfect markets. The direct participation of farmers should be increased. Market infrastructure should be improved through storage (go-down) facilities, cold storages, loading and weighing facilities. Improvement in the road network, and cold-chain facilities are also of substantial importance. Greater transparency of the operations through supervision and systems can also help substantially. The market integration and efficiency can also be improved by making up-to-date market information available to all participants through various means, including a good market information systems, internet and good telecommunications facilities at the markets.

Fruit and Vegetable Marketing and its Efficiency in India: A Study of Wholesale Markets in the Ahmedabad

There has been great concern in recent years regarding the efficiency of marketing of fruits and vegetables in India. It is believed that poor efficiency in the marketing channels and poor marketing infrastructure leading to high and fluctuating consumer prices and only a small portion of the consumer rupee reaching the producer farmers. This paper examines these aspects in regulated wholesale markets for fruits and vegetables in Ahmedabad City area. These regulated markets were established to improve the marketing efficiency. The system of sale followed in these markets indicated that open auction as a system of sale is yet to take roots in these markets and the marketing system was dominated by open auction or secret bidding resulting to significant erosion of marketing efficiency. Analysis of marketing costs indicated that on an average they hover around 8 percent of the consumer price for vegetables 11 to 15 percent for fruits. On an average the share of farmers in consumer rupee was hardly 48 percent for vegetables and 37 percent for fruits. The study suggests that regulated wholesale markets can help in improving the marketing efficiency by promoting direct contact with the farmers, increasing the number of buyers and sellers in the market, promoting open auction system of marketing and strengthening or introducing facilities and services such as go-down, cold storage, transparency and access to internal and external market environment.

Groundwater Irrigation in India: Gains, Costs and Risks

Groundwater has rapidly emerged to occupy a dominant place in India.'s agriculture and food security in the recent years. It has become the main source of growth in irrigated area over the past 3 decades, and it now accounts for over 60 percent of the irrigated area in the country. It is estimated that now over 70 percent of India.'s food grain production comes from irrigated agriculture, in which groundwater plays a major role. Since the development of groundwater irrigation has not largely been government or policy driven . has happened gradually through highly decentralized private activity, this revolution has often gone largely unrecognized. However, despite this huge significance, groundwater irrigation is heading for a crisis in India and needs urgent understanding and attention. The number of irrigation blocks considered overexploited is increasing at an alarming rate of 5.5 percent per year. The number of blocks in which, officially, the creation of wells must completely stop is scaling new heights every year. Yet, the sinking of wells continues rapidly at enormous private, public and environmental cost. The way India will manage its groundwater resource in the future will clearly have very serious implications for the future growth and development of the agriculture sector in India, as well as the alleviation of poverty in India.

The Adoption and Economics of Bt Cotton in India: Preliminary Results from a Study

The paper presents preliminary results from a study of the economics and adoption of Bt cotton in India. Biotech crops, which made their appearance in the world about a decade ago, have gained substantial popularity and acceptance in many parts of the world including US, China, Australia, Mexico, Argentina and South Africa. However, their introduction in India has been relatively late and controversial and they still have considerable ground to cover in the country. Cotton is a major commercial crop in India but has substantial problems particularly from extensive pest damage and poor yields. Bt cotton offers a promising solution to these serious problems. Data from the survey, which covered the important cotton states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, and 694 farmers, indicates that Bt cotton offers good resistance to bollworms as well as several other pests. The incidence of these pests is reported to be considerably lower in Bt cotton as compared to Non-Bt cotton. The yields of Bt cotton are found to be higher and the yield increase/ difference statistically significant in all the states under both irrigated and rain-fed conditions. As a result, given the good market acceptance of the product, the value of output per hectare is higher in all the states and conditions. The question of higher cost of cultivation exists, and is confirmed, mainly because of high seed cost and not commensurate reduction in pesticide cost. However, the profit is found to be higher in all the states to the estimated extent of about 80-90 percent on an average when the effects of associated inputs are included. The returns are highest in Maharashtra followed by Gujarat and then Andhra Pradesh. Subjective assessment indicates that farmers see advantage in Bt cotton in pest incidence, pesticide cost, cotton quality, yield and profit. Almost all farmers indicate that they plan to plant Bt cotton in the future. To increase the benefits from the technology, the farmers strongly urge reduction in the seed cost, greater field extension and demonstration work on the correct practices, and more Bt cotton varieties to suit the diverse agro-ecological settings.

Fishing Methods of Gulf of Mannar

In order to present recent information regarding the fishing method of Gulf of Mannar, this article has been written. Different types of crafts and gears have been described. Recently motorisation of indigenous craft has been introduced. Most of the nets have been fabricated by synthetic or nylon thread

On a bumper catch of catfish Tachysurus serratus at Karwar, Uttara Kannada

During January, 1991, atotal of 210 units of purse-seines were operated from Karwar. The depth of the fishing ground ranged between 21 and 40 m.On 22nd January, 1991. one purse-seine unit landed exclusively 9 tonnes of catfish

Neuromorphic building blocks for locomotion pattern generation

The central pattern generators network (CPGs) plays an important role in motion control which enables creatures to interact with the world. A novel neuromorphic circuit model presented in this work can be used as the simple building blocks for prescribing more complex, coordinated motor patterns. The circuit demonstrates its capability in generating the activity frequency and duty cycle, independently adjustable by a small set of model parameters. The simulation outcomes also show that the circuit can implement the parallel and distributed algorithms for building the artificial CPGs to drive motors

What makes a social robot good at interacting with humans?

This paper discusses the nuances of a social robot, how and why social robots are becoming increasingly significant, and what they are currently being used for. This paper also reflects on the current design of social robots as a means of interaction with humans and also reports potential solutions about several important questions around the futuristic design of these robots. The specific questions explored in this paper are: “Do social robots need to look like living creatures that already exist in the world for humans to interact well with them?”; “Do social robots need to have animated faces for humans to interact well with them?”; “Do social robots need to have the ability to speak a coherent human language for humans to interact well with them?” and “Do social robots need to have the capability to make physical gestures for humans to interact well with them?”. This paper reviews both verbal as well as nonverbal social and conversational cues that could be incorporated into the design of social robots, and also briefly discusses the emotional bonds that may be built between humans and robots. Facets surrounding acceptance of social robots by humans and also ethical/moral concerns have also been discussed

Design and development of the sEMG-based exoskeleton strength enhancer for the legs

This paper reviews the different exoskeleton designs and presents a working prototype of a surface electromyography (EMG) controlled exoskeleton to enhance the strength of the lower leg. The Computer Aided Design (CAD) model of the exoskeleton is designed,3D printed with respect to the golden ratio of human anthropometry, and tested structurally. The exoskeleton control system is designed on the LabVIEW National Instrument platform and embedded in myRIO. Surface EMG sensors (sEMG) and flex sensors are usedcoherently to create different state filters for the EMG, human body posture and control for the mechanical exoskeleton actuation. The myRIO is used to process sEMG signals and send control signals to the exoskeleton. Thus,the complete exoskeleton system consists of sEMG as primary sensor and flex sensor as a secondary sensor while the whole control system is designed in LabVIEW. FEA simulation and tests show that the exoskeleton is suitable for an average human weight of 62 kg plus excess force with different reactive spring forces. However, due to the mechanical properties of the exoskeleton actuator, it will require an additional liftto provide the rapid reactive impulse force needed to increase biomechanical movement such as squatting up. Finally, with the increasing availability of such assistive devices on the market, the important aspect of ethical, social and legal issues have also emerged and discussed in this paper

Automated Top View Registration of Broadcast Football Videos

In this paper, we propose a novel method to register football broadcast video frames on the static top view model of the playing surface. The proposed method is fully automatic in contrast to the current state of the art which requires manual initialization of point correspondences between the image and the static model. Automatic registration using existing approaches has been difficult due to the lack of sufficient point correspondences. We investigate an alternate approach exploiting the edge information from the line markings on the field. We formulate the registration problem as a nearest neighbour search over a synthetically generated dictionary of edge map and homography pairs. The synthetic dictionary generation allows us to exhaustively cover a wide variety of camera angles and positions and reduce this problem to a minimal per-frame edge map matching procedure. We show that the per-frame results can be improved in videos using an optimization framework for temporal camera stabilization. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach by presenting extensive results on a dataset collected from matches of football World Cup 2014