Marketing problems of dairy farmers with reference to distribution channels and pricing aspects

Dairying in India, in general, is closely interwoven as an integral part of and an adjunct to agriculture, but it did not receive as much attention as it deserves relative to crop production. Even though the share of agriculture in GDP has been declining, the value of output from livestock, dairying is showing an increasing trend. In India about 46 per cent of the total milk produced is consumed in liquid form and 47 per cent is converted into traditional products like cottage butter, ghee, paneer, khova, curd, malai, etc. Only 7 per cent of the milk goes into the production of western products like milk powders, processed butter and processed cheese. The remaining 54 per cent is utilized for conversion of milk products. Among the milk products manufactured by the organized sector some of the prominent ones are ghee, butter, cheese, ice creams, milk powders, malted milk food, condensed milk, infant food etc. Of these ghee alone accounts for 85 per cent. The main objective of this paper is to analyse the marketing problems of Vijay a and Heritage Dairy Farmers in the study region with reference to different channels of distribution and price aspects.