Production, price spread and marketing efficiency of farmed shrimp in Thane District of Maharashtra

Abstract

Maharashtra is the largest producer of fish in India in terms of marine fish landings next to Kerala and Gujarat. But overall performance of Maharashtra in inland fish production is only 4% of the total inland fish production of 5 million t. Only 18% of the brackishwater area has been developed for shrimp farming in Maharashtra. This is restricted to Thane, Raigad, Ratnagiri, Sindudurg and Mumbai districts. Brackishwater aquaculture shrimp production in Maharashtra stood at 0.009 lakh million t in 2009 which was less than one percent of the total fish production in Maharashtra. The present study pertains to the Thane District in respect of government leased out, private and cooperative shrimp farms as the ultimate unit. The proportionate probability sampling technique has been used to select 69 farmers from three villages. The present study makes an attempt to study the production input-output relationships, existing marketing channels for shrimp and evaluate the price spread and marketing efficiency of different channels. The effects of variation in the consumer price of the farmer, processor, liaison agent and hyper market are also identified.