A temporal price divergence analysis of grapes at wholesale and retail level in Maharashtra

Horticultural crops like grape are subjected to high price volatility due to lack of storage, transportation and processing facilities, aside from weather and institutional risks. There are also wide fluctuations in monthly prices of grape, which lead to seasonality and which cause a perpetual concern to producers. Fluctuations in annual prices, which are generally cyclical in nature, also affect the export performance as well as domestic marketing of produce. In the light of this background, the present study seeks to examine the price movement of grape in the state of Maharashtra with focus on nature of price fluctuations at wholesale and retail levels. The study clearly underscored the fact that the cyclical fluctuations in annual and monthly prices of grape led to a cause of perpetual concern to producers since their share in consumer's price still remained at lower ebb. The computation of typical seasonal indices of wholesale and retail prices clearly exhibited a trend of peak wholesale and retail prices of grape in the month of December and May with lowest prices in this respect being observed in the months of March. One of the major factors responsible for lower share of producer in retail prices of onion was traced in higher cumulative marketing margins cornered by various market functionaries within the channel. It is to be noted that due to inadequate infrastructure facilities most of the farmers prefer to dispose of their produce immediately after harvest, which results in low prices on offer. This obviously necessitates developing adequate post harvest infrastructure facilities like storage, transportation, pre-cooling units, cold storages, and refrigerated vans for the transportation of highly perishable fruit crops vegetable, etc., especially to protect farmers from undue low prices on offer. The study also favoured exercising various regulative measures to check practices of various functionaries involved in the marketing of high value crops.