An inquiry of the nature and causes of price variation in vegetable marketing system of Bangladesh

Md.Mainul Islam

doi:10.20525/ijrbs.v9i6.882

Abstract

The study was conducted to examine the nature of vegetable price variation from farmers to different traders through different marketing channels and identified some factors that were causes for vegetable price variation. On the basis of vegetable trader, five marketing channels identified which responsible for transporting vegetables from farmer to consumer. This study pointed out that the maximum price variation chain is Farmer ? Wholesaler ? Agent ? Retailer ? Consumer. This study also explored that price variation has a positive relationship with the increase of trader’s number and several times price variation executed in retailers’ level. Sometimes new trader arrivals in retail level which depends on the nature of vegetable deterioration. The majority farmers and traders remarked that price variation is occurred due to high input cost, high transportation cost, and traditional marketing system

Highlights

Bangladesh is an agriculture based country where 40.62 % labor force employed in the agriculture sector (BER, 2018) and about 63.37 % people are living in rural areas (World-Bank, 2018)
Vegetable farmer produces vegetables and hands over to different type of traders with low price; such vegetables reach to the consumer through different types of vegetable traders, but traders’ charges high price for vegetable trading, so a big amount of price is varied during vegetable marketing from farmer to consumer
About 46 % traders said that high price variation occurred due to existing traditional marketing system, approximately 41 % traders said that high price variation exist from farmers to retail levels due to high transportation cost; vegetable traders reported that every trader individually incurred high transportation cost during vegetable trading

Summary

Introduction

Bangladesh is an agriculture based country where 40.62 % labor force employed in the agriculture sector (BER, 2018) and about 63.37 % people are living in rural areas (World-Bank, 2018). Agents (Arotdar ) are another type of traders who buy vegetables from wholesalers and sell them to retailers and street vendors; they store vegetables usually maximum three days and some time store cold storage. Channel-IV constituted with farmer, wholesaler (piker), agent (arotdar), retailer and consumer.

Results

Conclusion