Challenges Faced by Warehouses in Indian Agricultural Marketing

Abstract

Indian government has taken several steps towards commercialisation of the agricultural sector and making it globally competitive. These include setting up of warehouses and cold storage chains; and price realisation through market driven forces vide commodity exchanges. Agricultural marketing needs a strong warehousing system for safe storage of the agricultural products and to get good price, for the products enjoy good demand in the market. This ensures that the farmers would get reasonable return. Even though several steps have been taken by the government for the promotion of warehouses with the basic aim of providing storage facility to all the producers, still they are facing many challenges. The paper attempts to study the status and challenges of warehouses in the Indian agricultural marketing. This would enable the officials and programmers to modify the programmes and rules and regulations relating to warehouses. The study found that the storage space available in the country is not sufficient to cater to the procured stocks. As a result, a substantial quantity of food grains is stored in Cover and Plinth (CAP) storage, indicating a strong need for more warehouses. Without availing finance from banks and other financial institutions, warehousing facilities cannot be established by the entrepreneurs. Besides, land requirements for construction of the warehouses are difficult to meet now-a-days due to high cost of land. Hence, liberal finance from the banks and suitable policies are essential to acquiring land for constructing additional warehouses. This would help the industry to upgrade the agricultural marketing sector in general and warehousing industry in particular.