1.1. Introduction

The term agricultural marketing is composed of two words -agriculture and marketing. Agriculture, in the broadest sense means activities aimed at the use of natural rural resources for human welfare, and marketing connotes a series of activities involved in moving the goods from the point of production to the point of consumption. Specification, the subject of agricultural marketing includes marketing functions, agencies, channels, efficiency and cost, price spread and market integration, producer’s surplus etc. The agricultural marketing system is a link between the farm and the non-farm sectors.

In India Agriculture was practiced formerly on a subsistence basis; the villages were self sufficient, people exchanged their goods, and services within the village on a barter basis. With the development of means of transport and storage facilities, agriculture has become commercial in character; the farmer grows those crops that fetch a better price. Marketing of agricultural produce is considered as an integral part of agriculture, since an agriculturist is encouraged to make more investment and to increase production. Thus there is an increasing awareness that it is not enough to produce a crop or animal product; it must be marketed as well.

Agricultural marketing involves in its simplest form the buying and selling of agricultural produce. But, in modem times, marketing of agricultural produce is different from that of olden days. In modem marketing, agricultural produce has to undergo a series of transfers or exchanges from one hand to another before it finally reaches the consumer.

The National Commission on Agriculture defined agricultural marketing as a process which starts with a decision to produce a saleable farm commodity and it involves all aspects of market structure of system, both functional and institutional, based on technical and economic considerations and includes pre and post- harvest operations, assembling, grading, storage, transportation and distribution. The Indian council of Agricultural Research defined involvement of three important functions, namely (a) assembling (concentration) (b) preparation for consumption (processing) and (c) distribution.