Suggestions from mango growers to overcome the constraints

Introduction

Mango is the national fruit of India. For ages, the mango tree has been described as Kalpavriksha (wish-granting tree). It is known as "the king of fruits". It is the choicest fruit in India and abroad. Its long period of domestication in India is well evidenced by its mention in ancient scriptures. Mango is a part and parcel of the cultural heritage of India. Today the mango tree and its fruit remain important in Indian religious and cultural symbols. Mango captures the markets, streets, roadsides and homes in India during the summer months of April-July and the various stages the fruit goes through before reaching consumers. Mango orchards are often leased to pre-harvest contractors who oversee the crop until maturity. Prices of mangoes vary due to the irregular bearing habits of trees. The district of Kachchh, with its widely known desert -the Rann of Kachchh -has a largely torrid climate around the year and therefore, the Kesar mangoes that grow there have a special unique taste. The present study was carried out to find out the suggestion of respondents about marketing of mangos in Kachchh district with following objectives:

Objectives

To seek the suggestions from mango growers to overcome the constraints.

Methodology

Present study was conducted in Kachchh district of North Gujarat. Among ten talukas of Kachchh, four talukas viz.; Anjar, Bhuj, Mandvi and Nakhatrana were selected purposively on the basis of highest area and production. From each selected talukas five villages were selected randomly. Thus, total twenty villages were selected for the study.; thus total 240 mango growers sample size was selected for study. An Ex-post-facto research design was applied. Objective wise structural schedule was prepared and for data collection a personal contact method was followed. Data was analyzed with suitable statistics and relationship was obtained by the used of correlation of coefficient for inference.

Results and Discussion

Suggestions from mango growers to overcome the constraints Mango growers were asked to give valuable suggestions to overcome the constraints they faced in mango production. Frequency and per cent of each suggestion reported by the mango growers were computed and ranked accordingly. The suggestions given by the mango growers to overcome the constraints in mango production enterprise are presented in Table 1. A critical look in the Table 5.30 indicates that the mango growers give nine suggestions in marketing of mango produce. The suggestions given by the mango growers in descending order of the importance were; promote low-cost farm mechanization (75.42%), followed by APMC should monitor and assure charges as per norms to prevent exploitation of farmers and assure fair trade (73.75%), provide training on post-harvest management (70.83%), more buyers should be in open auction (67.92%), Government should establish cold storage units (64.58%) were major suggestion given by mango growers and they were ranked as I, II, III, IV & V respectively. While, promote farmers organization (61.67%), followed by fixing minimum support price for the produce (49.17%), providing local market for agro based processed food products (43.75%), information regarding export should be provided (39.58%) and they were belonged to ranked as VI, VII, VIII www.extensionjournal.com & IX., respectively. This finding is in the line with the findings of Settipalli et al.

(2021) [5] , Roy (2022) [4] and Murugan et al. (2024) [3] .

Conclusion

From the above results it can be conclude that Major suggestions given by mango growers were; promote lowcost farm mechanization, followed by APMC should monitor and assure charges as per norms to prevent exploitation of farmers and assure fair trade, provide training on post-harvest management, more buyers should be in open auction, Government should establish cold storage units. These suggestions affect the marketing behaviour of the mango growers greatly. Hence, these suggestions need to be this implies that the concerned agencies should take a greater interest to mitigate these farmers' constraint urgently.

References

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