Abstract:
The vegetable marketing system in a country should be effective and efficient one
to the country’s economy because the food is important need for the human beings. Due to the
perishable nature of the vegetables, it has high probability to damage and going as wastages.
Metrics tons of vegetable from the annual production is going as wastages in Sri Lanka. In
Dambulla Dedicated Economic Centre, there are huge quantity of vegetables are going as
wastage in every year and some season. The main problem of the Dambulla Dedicated
Economic Centre is that normally 30 % of vegetables going on as wastage in daily. But in some
season the damage is high. It is differ from season to season. As a main vegetable distribution
hub, the good conditions for the vegetable marketing is require in order to increase its quality
while satisfying the customers by minimizing the wastages. Based on the vegetable wastage
problem, the objective of this research is to identify the main factors influence on effective
handling of the wastages of vegetable marketing system in Dambulla Dedicated Economic
Centre and its impact on the effective handling of wastage. Mainly, five factors were identified for
the vegetable wastage problem. Those factors were considered as independent variables such
as transportation, packaging, storage condition, communication of information and excess
supply. Sample was selected as 300 farmers from convenience sampling in a structured
questionnaire method. Data has analysed by using Descriptive statistics, Bivariate and
Multivariate analysis and data evaluated through the SPSS version 21.0.0.0. Based on the
analysis all the variables are having the moderate level and positive relationship. Under the
52.6% variation of the variables, contribute to the effective handling of wastages of the vegetable
marketing system.
