Farmer finds the buyers: Electronic and traditional influences in Tomato marketing

Abstract A policy that brings resilience of price to product arrivals would be beneficial for the farmers. The expanse of the market that farmers can reach out to and the prices they fetch mark the stretching of frontier of agricultural marketing. Marketing success is deeply associated with available intelligence on demand distribution that ICT can now bring to farmers. A study of Uttar Pradesh conducted for a perishable crop Tomato reveals imperfection of markets creating dispersions of prices among markets. Some of these markets are privileged with e-NAM that confers superiority in computerization. Comparison between the two types of markets found greater volatility in less privileged markets. Data suggests that farmers increasingly hold produce and release them months after harvest but among other variables, superiority of ICT is found to be an important influence in improving price, increasing Arrivals and reducing distress during post-harvest months when prices tend to fall.