Farmers’ Choice for Output Marketing Channels of Cauliflower in Himachal Pradesh, India: A Multinomial Logit Model Analysis

The market channel choice are the contributing issues which has impact on production and sales of cauliflower crop. Despite their importance, yet adequate research has not been carried out on it, particularly in hill regions of India. Considering this, the present study focuses on the factors affecting cauliflower farmers’ choice of output marketing channels and what level their market choice influences the market participation in Himachal Pradesh. The field survey was employed on a sample of 200 farmers through field interviews based on a structured questionnaire. The multinomial logistic regression model was employed to determine the factors influencing farmers’ choice for output marketing channels. The finding of this paper reveals that there are five output marketing channels used by cauliflower growers in the study area, producer-retailer-consumer (1%) followed by producer-retailer-consumer (2.50%) producer-commission agent-retailer-consumer (39%), local trader-wholesaler-retailer-consumer (24%) and producer-wholesaler-retailer-consumer (33.50%) respectively. Further, the empirical results shows that education, farm income, experience, market distance market information found to be significant at 1%, 5% and 10% significant level which affects farmers choice to choose marketing channel. However, slows sale slow sales of cauliflower crop in marketing Channel-A affects farmers choice to participate in other marketing channels such as Channel-B, D and E. Moreover, the study concluded with the suggestion for development of suitable institutional support programmes, such as public–private partnerships, to better connect farmers to markets.