Economics of Chemical Free Jaggery Production in Kolhapur District of Maharashtra

India is the largest producer of the sweeteners in the world including sugar and jaggery. Since ancient times, jaggery has been an important item of food and even today, jaggery manufacturing continues to be the most important cottage industry in India. The present investigation was undertaken to examine the production cost, marketing channels, marketing cost of jaggery. The primary data pertaining to the agricultural year 2022- 23 were collected from 20 jaggery processing units each from Karveer and Panhala tahsils of Kolhapur district. The simple random sampling technique was used for selection of the 40 jaggery processing units. The average cost of establishment of jaggery processing unit was Rs. 8,33,188.90. The total cost of jaggery production per processing unit was Rs. 38,45,644.37 The return from jaggery production per processing unit was Rs. 47,93,800 with a net return of Rs. 9,48,155. 63. The B:C ratio was found to be more than one which implies that it was profitable to the investment in jaggery processing activities. The major constraints faced by the jaggery producers were scarcity of skilled labour (Gulvi), high wages of labour, timely availability of clarifying agents, shortage of raw material (sugarcane) and lack of training on advanced technology of jaggery production.