Impact of COVID-19 on Agri Supply Chain in Nashik District

Abstract

India has faced many pandemic diseases like plague, swine flu, cholera, pneumonia, bird flu, etc., affecting the Indian economy. But COVID-19 is adversely affecting the country. To be specific Agriculture sector is most vulnerable to losses everywhere. Indian agriculture has not been very progressive as compared to other industries. Farmers don’t get a reasonable price for their produce. Farmers here are illiterate and trick by money lenders, middle-man, traders, etc. Most of the margin of farmers taken by middle-men results in loss of farmers and customers getting the product at a high price. Also, there are fewer storage facilities, so they have to sell their produce immediately after harvesting. Considering the research region, i.e., Nasik District, where most of the farm produce like grapes, cereals and vegetables have harvesting season in this period. Due to lockdown in the country, as COVID hit here, there have been more significant losses to grapes and other farms produce like cereals and vegetables. Nasik, which is the region of my research, has around 6 lakh farmers, wherein I have taken a sample survey of 100 farmers, which comprise small, marginal, medium, and large farmers. There is a need for change in agricultural practices wherein farmers should adopt concepts like proper supply chain management, cold storage, processing in a farm of whichever produce is possible, Direct marketing, Private wholesale market, organized retailing. Cold storage and cooperative storage facilities can play a significant role in such a critical situation. The need for change in agricultural marketing and coping with such issues as COVID is of utmost importance. New innovative ideas can help to sustain farmers in such severe problems.