Production and marketing efficiency of small onion in Tamil Nadu: An economic analysis

The present study was carried out to estimate the economics of cultivation, price spread, marketing channels, and marketing efficiency of small onion in Tamil Nadu. Highly perishable nature of small onion increases intervention of intermediaries. Perambalur district of Tamil Nadu was selected purposively since onion area is growing annually at the rate of 6.5 per cent in the district. Data collection was made from randomly selected 90 onion farmers from the study district. The Cobb-Douglas production function model, price spread estimation and Shepherd's ratio were employed for the study. The cost of production and net return per kg of small onion was Rs 4.76 and Rs onion. Direct marketing (Channel IV) followed by sales through retailers (Channel III) gave higher returns to the producer.