An empirical study on maize value chain in Tamil Nadu

Maize is one of the leading staple cereals in the world in terms of production and it is termed as a most versatile and multipurpose industrial and energy crop. Due to varied number of value-added products evolving in the recent years, maize has a major shift towards indirect consumption in Tamil Nadu. Therefore, the study is selected to analyse market efficiency of different marketing channels in the maize value chain in Tamil Nadu. The primary data on cultivation of maize is collected from 60 maize producers of Perambalur and Salem districts of Tamil Nadu. Value chain analysis of maize includes producers, traders, commission agents, processors (poultry feed units), wholesalers, retailers and the consumers (livestock farmers). Price spread and marketing efficiency of different marketing channels is calculated. Among the three existing marketing channels of maize in Tamil Nadu, Channel III is considered to be the best channel by the maize producers and it is confirmed by the Acharya’s approach which have higher marketing efficiency. The farmers share in consumer rupee in the marketing channel III was high compared to other marketing channels. The study is intended to help the maize farmers in adopting a better marketing channel where they can get better profit in maize cultivation by adopting less intervention of market intermediaries.