Up-country vegetable production and marketing: challenges and opportunities

Abstract

The agriculture industry in Sri Lanka plays a vital role in socio-economic background. The share of agriculture in Sri Lanka’s GDP approximately 7% in 2019. Vegetable production and marketing system face immense challenges which are causing severe damages creating long term issues. The vegetable sub-sector contributes to the national GDP. The cultivation of vegetable becomes a prominent income among the farmers in Sri Lanka. Consistent with this information, the identified area is establishing a statistically equipped market data system and therefore the comparative study is vital to identify the challenges of the vegetable cultivation within the Up-country Region. This study aims to find out challenges in vegetable production and marketing in the up-country region (Nuwara-Eliya, Badulla, Kandy & Matale) and to propose suggestions to mitigate such challenges within the study area to reinforce the socio-economy of the people. For this study, Primary data were employed with a questionnaire survey to determine socioeconomic data required for the study. Frequency distribution and percentages were used to analyze the socio-economic characteristic of respondents, patterns of marketing, the quantity of vegetable production were analyzed to identify the key variable of this study. And an explorative survey by conducting discussions with the groups and individuals of key stakeholders and informants in the up-country vegetable farming & marketing system.