Agro-Market Information and Farmers' Market Linkage: Way Forward

Abstract

This paper attempts to understand the information seeking behavior, market advisory preference of farmers and formulate suitable approaches for enhancing the market advisory services and suggest a few approaches, developing backward and forward linkages for farmers, for improving their profitability. Though farmers are adopting the latest crop production technologies to bring out best yield levels, the profitability is decided by the market forces only. Earlier studies have documented farmers rarely sell directly to consumers and there are significant price variations in the village markets. This information asymmetry will foster opportunistic behavior of other market actors which in turn traps farmers in vicious cycle of poverty. With a view to understand what kind of market information was most sought after by farmers and the sources from where they received this information, the authors carried out a research study in the Trichy district of Tamil Nadu, India. The results revealed that though farmers were aware of many of the sources providing market information such as the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Kissan Call Centre, etc. they primarily still sought the information from agro input dealers. The paper concludes with a note that market led extension approach with suitable ICT interventions will help the farmers in reaping better returns in a sustainable manner.

Keywords: Information seeking behavior, Market advisory preferences, Sources of market information, Market intelligence, Market advisory services, Information gap, Agricultural technology, Agriculture Advisory System, Mobile telephony applications

JEL Classification: Q13