Indian Journal of Agricultural Marketing

The study attempts to analyse the potato price trends, variability, integration and price transmission in selected markets of northern hills and plain region of the country. High prices of potato were found to be associated with high variability. A strong and positive correlation was observed among the selected markets indicating close movement between prices. The study confirmed the presence of cointegration implying long-run price association among the major hill and plain markets of potato in India. Further Granger causality test confirmed bidirectional causality among Haldwani and most of the markets except Agra (major plain market) and there exist price convergence between Haldwani and all other markets with a greater speed of adjustment in Dehradun, Delhi and Lucknow market as compared to Agra, when Haldwani (major hill market) is assumed to be influenced by the prices in other markets. The analysis of variance decomposition indicated that fluctuations in Lucknow market were highly affected only due to price movement in Agra market. As potato crop and its stakeholders have suffered from very high price volatility in the recent past, strong market intelligence network in the region can help disseminate early potato price signals to curtail such extreme shocks with an advance and effective supply, trade and policy management.