Organic production system and sustainable positioning of kandhamal organic turmeric and its export opportunities

Inorder tosustainablydevelopacountry, we must lookat theexports in all thesectors. Fromagriculture to agri-business and from local value chain to the global value chain, should be the natural progression of sustainable agri-business operations.

This thesis broadly revolves around a very critical issue clamouring the entire agri-business operations across globe. To be more precise about this global havoc and crisis the problem statement of the thesis is: “Is forward and backward linkages/intricately designed food chain; resulting in better export opportunities and visibility?”

Kandhamal is one of the special export zones of India. The organic turmeric of Kandhamal is the only non-overlapping special export product from India. Although, there is a high demand of Kandhamal turmeric in the international markets however, the total market share for organic curcuma longa is still small. This actually is a great forecast of opportunities. This also calls for better market positioning strategies for economies of scales and economic viability. There is a mix of both quantitative and qualitative methodologies thathave beenused toanalyse thesurveydata. Weconsidered twoconstructs for this particular study. Each construct has a different respondent group. So, it accounted for methodological and data triangulation.(awareness of organic production system) quantitative analysis is considered. We have used binary logistic regression (Best, 2009-uses logistic regression to study farmer's decisions whether to use organic farming). As, many questions raised in the social sciences involveanalysingbinaryvariables.(sustainablepositioning); qualitative analysisis done throughcontent analysisand finally the Wilcox in signed rank test is used. (As, this test is onlyused in caseof less than 30 respondents. The thesis comprises of a total no of 8 chapters.

Chapter 1-is the brief overview of the thesis. This is the introductory chapter bringing forth the blueprint of the entire thesis. Chapter-2 comprises of the literature reviews and the development of the conceptual frameworks. The chapter vividly discusses the construct and the variables along with the research gap. Chapter-3 comprises of the research methodology used and the formulation of the research questions, research objectives and the research hypothesis. Chapter-4 the survey data is analysed and interpreted and the details of the hypothesis id also observed. Chapter-5 is the findings based on the factors undertaken for the study. The findings are crafted as answers to each research questions taken up for the study. Chapter-6 this chapter comprises the recommendations based on particular themes pulled out of the observed findings of the study. Chapter-7 this chapter discusses the limitations and scope of further research. Chapter-8 this chapter intends to pull together all the major contributions of this particular study done by the researcher.

The intent of the thesis is to foster an environment of sustainable trade and sustainable livelihood of the tribal farmers growing turmeric. This can only be achieved by strategizing the linkage of the local value chains to the global value chains. The strategizing of the Kandhamal turmeric can be possible by bringing strong trade related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) like geographical indications and sustainable positioning (niche marketing).