Vegetable supply chain management in Kerala

Abstract

Vegetables are known as the protective food. It has great scope in Indian agriculture due to their short duration, high productivity, nutritional benefits and economic viability. Kerala, one of the South Indian state, produces only about five lakh of tonnes of vegetables out of a total annual requirement of around 25 lakh tonnes which is not enough to feed the population. The state now depends entirely on neighboring states for its food requirements. According to thereport from department of agriculture, Kerala around Rs. 1,000 crore worth of vegetables are imported into Kerala yearly. The reasons for this low production of vegetables is due to less number of farmers, as most of the land is under rice cultivation and plantation rather than vegetables. As a thousand crore business is under the industry, the current supply chain management of vegetables is seems to be inefficient. This may be due to the interference of intermediaries. Due to these problems, both the farmers and consumers are being affected. Supply chain in Kerala is fragmented and involves numerous intermediaries such as distributors and resellers who earn the maximum benefit. Interstate supply chain suffers from many taxes. For smooth functioning supply chain needs professional people but we do not have trained work force in this field. So training and education in supply chain management is required. Supply chain related vegetables in Kerala must be worked upon to increase the efficiency. The present study on supply chain management of vegetables in Kerala helps to understand the various channels in SCM, barriers in SCM, problems and price spread of SCM.