Marketing and price forecasting of aggregatum onion were taken up in the Perambalur district of Tamil Nadu with 50 intermediaries of marketing. The study revealed that the marketable surplus was 84.30 per cent of the total small onion production and the rest of the production was retained for seed purpose, home consumption and social obligation. Five types of marketing channels were identified in the study area and price spread was estimated for each of the five marketing channels. Marketing channel I of farmers’ market was the efficient marketing channel which was due to better pricing mechanism, lesser price spread due to absence of intermediaries and better regulation despite the operation of traders in this channel. The price forecasting for small onion cultivation was estimated by the ARIMA model. It was found that the difference of order 1 was sufficient to achieve stationarity. Thep and qvalues were identified. According to AIC and SBC values themostsuitablemodel was ARIMA(2, 1, 2) since it had the lowest AIC and SBC values. The ACF and PACF values of the residual indicated that the aforesaid model was ‘good fit’. From the 2, 1, 2 model the forecasted value was high during the month of September with Rs 3681.11 per quintal and the forecasted January price of Rs 2451.72 per quintal was recorded the lowest forecasted price. Higher price fluctuation, perishability of onion and late payments by commission agents were the marketing constraints expressed by the sample farmers. The lack of storage facility, high handling cost and financial constraints were the most important problems faced by the intermediaries. Higher price fluctuation could be overcome by following DEMIC forecast of TNAU and eliminating price forecast through forward trading.
Marketing channel, price spread, marketing efficiency, ARIMAmodel
