Institutional support to farmers for production of IARI variety of Carrot: A value chain perspective

A value chain in agriculture refers to the set of actors and activities that are involved in the transfer of a basic agricultural product from the primary producer to the ultimate consumer where at each stage value is added to it. While in a supply chain the primary focus is on efficient flow of the produce from farm to fork and cost optimisation, a value chain takes up another dimension of product differentiation. It is the differentiated product that fetches higher income to its' stakeholders which also includes the farmers. The farmer, being the primary producer, plays a central role in the development of such a value chain. So, it is imperative that all the institutional supports in the form on inputs, market linkages, skill and capacity development programmes must be available to them. So, the present study was conducted to find out the degree of institutional support accessed by the selected eighty farmers, who were growing Carrot cv. Pusa Rudhira. An accessibility index was developed for this purpose. The locale of the study was in Uttar Pradesh and New Delhi. The results of the accessibility index show that in case of carrot cv. Pusa Rudhira 82.5 percent of the respondent had very low to medium level of accessibility. The results show that a significant portion of the farmers still lack the necessary institutional supports for value chain development.