Factors influencing on effective handling of wastage of the vegetable marketing system in Dambulla dedicated Economic Centre

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.