MAPPING MAIZE VALUE CHAINS IN TELANGANA

Abstract

Value chains have always been in existence in agriculture in the sense that farms carried out production and the final consumer accessed the produce, with the produce being passed through several intermediaries. Maize which is regarded as the “Queen of Cereals†and second most important cereal crop across the world can be seen with consumption base in three important
categories i.e., feed, food and industrial. With the diversified end uses, maize industry in India is being dominated by many players viz., farmers, aggregators/traders, processors (Feed industry/Starch industry) and consumers (Poultry industry/Food or feed industry. With existence of several small farms posing challenges in terms of highly dispersed collection of produce, transport arrangements, and quality assurance mechanisms, mapping the channels through which maize gets routed has been considered
as an important means to know the deficiencies and thereby propose corrective measures. With this background, the present investigation was conducted to know the channels through which maize was routed amongst various value chain partners in maize in four districts of Telangana.