The farmer’s path to market: insights on extension services support, types of crops and selling practices from situation assessment survey of Indian farmers

PurposeThis study aims to understand the relationship between extension services, crop types and farmers’ market participation in India. It further explores the factors influencing farmers’ choice of market and the role of extension service in shaping their decision of market participation.Design/methodology/approachThe multivariate logistic regression and probit model are used to understand factors influencing the farmers’ choice of market participation.FindingsThis study finds that the major crop selling takes place through the non-regulated markets. This highlights the crucial role of non-regulated spaces in the Indian agricultural marketing system, in spite of their shortcomings. The same pattern can be observed across all crop categories, indicating that institutional market mechanisms are either inaccessible or inefficient for the majority of the farmers. The study further reveals that the private extension services have emerged as a key and widely relied upon source of market-related information. The results show that farm households mainly rely on private extension services for agriculture-related advice. The logistic regression shows that demographic, farm and institutional variables also significantly influence farmers’ choice of market channels. The findings offer managerial implications by advocating for a dual market approach that improves transparency in non-regulated markets while addressing their inherent inefficiencies. This study also advocates for the strengthening of extension services to enhance farmer participation.Originality/valueThis study uniquely links extension services and crop choices to farmers’ market participation, offering fresh evidence from India’s unit-level data of the latest round (77th round, 2018–19) of the National Sample Survey on agricultural households in India.