Agricultural Marketing in India and Its Problems

Agriculture plays a vital role in India's economy. With food being the crowning need of mankind, much emphasis has been on commercialising agricultural production. For this reason, adequate production and even distribution of food has of late become a high priority global concern. Agricultural marketing is mainly the buying and selling of agricultural products. In earlier days when the village economy was more or less self-sufficient the marketing of agricultural products presented no difficulty as the farmer sold his produce to the consumer on a cash or barter basis. One of the economic objectives of India is to make optimum utilisation of scarce resources and, thereby, accelerate the economic development. To achieve this objective it has adopted a policy of encouraging agriculture and industrial sector. A sound policy of agricultural development requires concurrent analysis of not only the technical/production efficiencies in agriculture but also its marketing/distribution efficiencies. In this backdrop, this paper presents the structure of Agriculture Marketing in India, analyse the problems facing Agriculture Marketing in India and remedial measures for improvement of Agricultural Marketing in India.