Role and motivational factors of vendors in milk marketing system

Vendors are important players in milk procurement and distribution among the consumers especially in urban and semi-urban areas. In order to understand their role and motivational factors in milk marketing, a study was conducted in four regions of Uttar Pradesh during 2020-2021. A sample of 120 was considered for the study by randomly selecting 30 respondents each from western, eastern, central and Bundelkhand regions of Uttar Pradesh. The primary data were analysed using frequency and percentage. The finding revealed that all the vendors had performed the milk procurement and milk distribution activities, serving as major source of information as major roles and provision of farm inputs and advisory services as minor role across the four regions. Adulteration detection was reported as major role by 16.67 per cent of respondents and minor role by 80.83 per of them and 2.5 per cent were not considering it as role, link to government officials as major role by only 2.5 per cent of the vendors and 97.50 per cent of the reported it as minor role. Majority of the vendors in Central region (76.67%), Eastern region (86.67%), Bundelkhand region and Western region (66.67%) were motivated by seeing their previous generations who were running the vendorship successfully with good income and therefore they adopted it as family tradition. Good income in vendorship motivated 56.57 per cent of them in Central region, 50 per cent in Eastern region, 40 per cent in Bundelkhand region and 46.67 per cent in Western region. The study warrants promotion of vendors in the formal value chain by providing training and other support for development of sustainable milk marketing.