Problems scope and challenges of potato marketing with special references to the selected areas of North Bengal

From the very beginning of civilization, agriculture has been acting as food security with economic growth. India is an agriculture dominated country, primary source of livelihood about 43% of working population who are directly or indirectly engaged in agriculture and allied sector and the share of this sector in GVA at basic prices was 14.4% in 2018–19. Agriculture remains as the main stray of the Indian economy since times immemorial. In the industrial less environment of North Bengal, as agricultural product, potato has been treated as a popular and important economic weapon for the folks as well as vegetable which is the most consumed vegetable item of the country. There are 71.23 lakh farm families in West Bengal of whom 96% are small and marginal farmers. The average size of land holding is only 0.77 hectare. Around 4 lakh acres of land is under potato cultivation, in West Bengal and an estimated 10 lakh farmers are engaged in the farming from December to March every year. West Bengal produced 10.5-million metric ton potatoes in 202021 FY whereas North Bengal contributed 1.9 million metric ton. This is the highly capital intensive most valuable as well as profitable cash crop in Rabi season and only the ray of hope of the cultivators. Like others state the Potato cultivators of North Bengal also worst sufferers from proper marketing channel and forward backward linkage. There are too many intermediaries or ‘Farias’ who captured total production, storage and distribution system, not only that, now a days due to the exponential rise in input price and corrupt policies of Mandi or cold storage potato production are the beyond of the capacity of small and marginal farmers. Simultaneously due to the restricted sanction of institutional loan they are bound to take ‘Dadan’ from money lender, distress sale or leased their land for contract farming. After that, lack of transportation facilities, lack of financial resources, lack of organized marketing system, lack of standardization, lack of awareness of market, defective weight and scale, illiteracy and lack of unity, lack of storage, lack of market intelligence, poor quality of product and market news etc. our farmers are in vulnerable condition and unable to sale their products in proper price or stored in eficient manner for future demand as the potato is semi perishable product. There is an immense possibility of agro based industry on potato throughout North Bengal. The objective of this paper with in-depth research, experimental and theoretical approach, to find out possible scopes, proper strategies, analyze the challenges of potato marketing, which can guide entire stakeholders related to potato cultivation and potato marketing in North Bengal.