Agricultural marketing infrastructure in West Bengal with special reference to cold storage facility

Agricultural marketing plays an important role dealing with decisionmaking and controlling both financial and institutional aspects of market structure of agricultural products. Agricultural marketing infrastructures are essential for cost-effective marketing, to minimize post-harvest losses and to reduce health risks. Cold storages and cold chains are required for managing the temperature of perishable products in order to maintain quality and safety from the point of production through the distribution chain to the final consumers. The cold storage and chain industry in India is at an early stage and despite large production of perishable products and various government policies and subsidies; their potential remains untapped due to high share of single commodity cold storage, high initial investment, lack of enabling infrastructure, lack of awareness for handling perishable products and lapse of service either by the storage provider or the transporter leading to poor quality produce. West Bengal Government has undertaken and has been undertaking several steps for the improvements of agricultural marketing infrastructures with special reference to cold storage in the State on upgradable basis. Yet there are a lot of shortcomings in this respect and position of West Bengal is insignificant compared to many other states of India, inspite of the fact that West Bengal has a leading role in producing and supplying a significant per cent of agricultural products.