Maximising Farmers’ Income through Market Intelligence Service

Forecasting of prices well in advance of sowing of different crops in different seasons and during harvesting falls under price intelligence based on which farmers could take their decisions on sowing, selling and storing to get maximum returns. The Domestic and Export Market-Intelligence Cell (DEMIC) was established in November 2004 in Tamil Nadu Agricultural University to forecast prices and disseminate market advisories for 14 agricultural commodities through various media, viz. cell phone, radio including FM radios, TV, newspapers, farm magazines, regulated markets, KVKs and through Department of Agriculture and Agricultural Marketing and Agri-Business, Government of Tamil Nadu. Analysis of the impact of these market advisories with respect to the stakeholders, especially farmers will throw light on the effectiveness of this service and the same has been studied in this paper. The impact of price forecasts on three crops, viz. turmeric, maize and gingelly has been studied. The study has revealed that the market advisories were followed by the majority of the farmers and the partial budged analysis has shown a positive net return from all the three selected crop enterprises. The analysis of quality of forecast information has confirmed that the farmers were satisfied with the quality of market advisories, timeliness, easy access, accuracy and reliability.