Economic models in agriculture: Case study of onion farming

Name of Student: 
Project Type: 
M. Tech Project -II (TD 696)
Sector: 
Agriculture
Abstract: 
Economic models of co-operatives like AMUL provided a way to look at how co- operative and federation concepts bring prosperity to the farmers. The study started with intention to apply similar method to Horticulture. Onion crop is selected as it is consumed widely and has high standard deviation of modal price distribution, and also show impact on inflation. Study was made to know why most farmers take to onion crop in Nashik region. Then, the production costs, storage costs and electricity costs are known from the survey. These data showed that income of farmer as well as onion market price fluctuation is directly related to availability of better storage facilities among farmers. This hypothesis is clarified through a survey of around 60 onion farmers in 5 villages of Sinnar and Lasalgaon in Nashik districts. Onion market price data of last 10 years is analyzed to know the better time to sell the onions. With the help of visits to the Govt. offices related to agriculture, attempt is made to study about the onion storage subsidy and its success among the farmers. Finally, a new model of storage structure is designed with less cost and expectedly least storage losses. Various FPOs are visited and understood the ways in which they brought up interventions to give bargaining power to the farmers. Also, the extended role of FPOs to make value added products and ways to create a market are studied. The study concludes that a solution to regulate market price fluctuation and bring prosperity to onion farmers involves two steps. First, to have proper storage facility and the second, to have a good FPO that uses innovative business strategies to sell the produce.