Centre for Study of Regional Development School of Social Science Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi – 67
Online published on 30 March, 2012.
A vast quantity of vegetables is destroying every year because of lack of knowledge about post harvest mechanisms. Vegetable is highly perishable in nature and it requires more management from sowing to harvesting as well as post harvesting. Farmers can enhance their income through value addition in vegetables.
Value addition is nothing but it is process of cleaning, washing, sorting, grading, packaging, marketing and processing of vegetable products. Value addition started from the field and end to the consumer. In the field organic cultivation is the main process of value addition in the vegetable crops. Organic products are characterised by chemical free, no fertilizer application, and thereby low level of toxins in the products.
Farmers are eager to earned more money from a unit of area through value addition and processing of products. But they have problems of that are related to technological problems, infrastructure, power supply, labour shortage, and marketing problems.
The study has been conducted in the state of Punjab, India, in 2004-05. The 225 vegetables growers have been selected randomly. The data have been collected though structured interview schedule. The selected three vegetables such as potato, chilli, and pea included in the study, because these vegetables have highest area under cultivation.
Findings of the study indicates that majority of farmers have faced problems in value addition in vegetables related to technical, transportation and marketing. Few of them have reported that consumer demanded branded processed product not their process products.
