Improving the Cardamom Marketing: Assessing the Marketing Efficiency of Cardamom in Theni District, Tamil Nadu

Introduction: The cardamom is the oldest spices and belongs to Zingiberaceae family. It is cultivated in the thick shady, rainy forests of the Western Ghats of the South India. The major growing states are Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in reference to green cardamom (Small) and its botanical name Elettaria cardamomum. The part of Theni district is constituted by thick vegetations of hills of Western Ghats and Cumbum Valley at Bodi and Uthamapalayam taluk. In these areas, the farmers are cultivating the Cardamom. This study aims to find out the socio-economic characters, marketing behavior, assess the marketing efficiency of different supply channels and ranking the major problems faced by farmers to market their agricultural product.

Methodology: The author used both primary and secondary data. The maximum area covered by cardamom was used as criteria for selecting the blocks. Purposive random sampling method was used to select the villages and the data was collected from the 60 farmers and other stakeholders using well-structured questionnaire. The descriptive statistics and percentage analysis were used for interpreting the results. For marketing analysis, marketing costs, marketing margin and price spread were estimated. For marketing efficiency, Acharya’s method (2003) was used.

Results: The 34 respondents with 56.67 percent were found to be 21-35 years of age group. It was found that 7 respondents only with 11.67 percent and 26 respondents with 43.33 percent were found to be illiterate and the annual turnover of 1-5 lakh respectively. Using Acharya’s method (2003), the marketing efficiency of the channel I, II, III were 5.92, 9.97, 7.27 respectively. The price spread in the marketing channel I, II, and III are Rs. 295.94 per Kg, Rs. 163.54 per Kg and 229.48 per Kg respectively. It was shown that channel II is efficient due to high efficiency value and less price spread. Producer in the marketing channel II had highest share (90.88) in consumer rupee. The result showed that the Lack of timely adequate funds were major problem faced by the cardamom farmers with garret mean score of 65.23. The financial problems were common in the respondents.

Conclusion: Marketing channel II was efficient because the spice auction center plays a vital role in protecting the farmer as well as consumer from the malpractices and exploitation of Intermediaries and to provide the transparency in trading operations of cardamom. The government may increase the financial assistance or technical support program to support the cardamom growers of the Tamil Nadu. The board should educate the farmers to grade or sort the cardamom before entering the e-Auction center to get better price for better quality of the commodity and to expand the pilot project of separate e-auctions for lab tested cardamom for artificial colours and pesticidal residues to potential markets of Tamil Nadu.