Market Linkages of Rice Arrivals and Prices in APMC Bangarpet with Processing Units:A Value Chain Analysis

The present study has analysed the market linkages of rice arrivals and Prices in APMC Bangarpet with processing units: a value chain analysis. Rice as a global staple food-rice, wheat and maize are the three leading food crops in the world; together they directly supply more than 50 per cent of all calories consumed by the entire human population. A value chain is a sequence of related business activities (functions) from provision of specific inputs for a particular product to primary production, transformation and marketing, up to the final sale of a particular product to the consumer. This process can raise the income of farmers and will provide incentive for improving their management practices towards higher farm productivity. The income of the farmers can be enhanced by increasing production, value addition and better marketing options. The marketing factors are marketable surplus, marketing channels, numbers of players at each level, profit margin of respective players and value addition by different channel players. Therefore, development of agriculture and agro-based industries should go hand in hand. This is because the most critical factor that our planners and policy makers have ignored in the past and the major reason why over the last six consecutive decennial censuses, the burden of workforce down the ladder in primary sector has not diminished despite continuously declining share of this sector, which presently stands as low as 16 per cent in the gross domestic products (GDP) of the country.