A trend analysis of middlemen marketing systems during the peak harvesting period in rural paddy cultivation area: a case study of Sittandy, Eravur pattu divisional secretariat

Abstract

Sri Lanka is an agricultural producing country among the south Asian region. Generation to generation the paddy cultivation is continue by many rural farmers .The paddy cultivation is one of the major productions of rice in both sessions Maha and Yala and a large number of farmers are cultivating production not only for subsistence purpose but also for commercial purpose as well. The farmers are used to sell their unprocessed paddy to middlemen, collectors, brokers and millers. In between the paddy farmer and the consumer, there are many middlemen involved in this area. This study examined how do the middlemen involving the paddy marketing system during the peak of the harvesting due to what are the challenges and weakness for small rural farmers. This study applied judgment sampling method, purposively selected 4 areas namely Kuddavaddai, Perumavally, Eralakulam and Peruvadda each area selected 25 farmers the total samples 100 and special case study with highlighted issues among the farmers with trend analysis to find out what are the reason involving middlemen’s marketing systems during the peak harvesting period in this area. 50% of middlemen purchasing paddy at farmers’ gates, 45% of middlemen providing loans, gradually 20%-80% of middlemen increasing post war period and more than 90% weakness of rural paddy farmers in pre and post-harvest techniques. The findings emphasize that this study leads to making better production environment for small scale farmers to run their cultivation in seasonable. Also, suggest that the government should consider controlling the price and support to the paddy farmers, timely collect ex-surplus of paddy and also implement the valuation product as a intermediate product for other production. Those activities will lead to avoid the middlemen involved in the rural areas.