Can Agricultural Marketing Policies Increase Income of Farm Households? - A Case Study of Dakshin Dinajpur District in West Bengal

Abstract

Agricultural marketing works with two marketing channel input marketing and product marketing. However, product marketing itself has many channels but this study deals with product market only where it creates link between cultivator and final consumer who are purchasing crops in different markets. However government has a control over input marketing in most of the items which are consumed by the farmers in subsidies rate but the most harmful and destructive nature of marketing faced by farmers is product marketing. In peak season of harvesting and especially for non-perishable crops farmers are facing huge loss and on the other hand the middlemen are getting enormous profit for same crops. This study tried to focus on profit gap and the determinants of this profit gap between farmer and middlemen.