An Economic Analysis of Small Ruminant Marketing in Karnataka State of India

Small ruminants are associated with the rural poor. They play a big role in supporting the livelihood system of the poorest men and women livestock keepers, especially in the marginalised areas. Sheep and goat marketing in India is highly unorganized. The general features of sheep and goat marketing are those markets are locally known as hat/animal fair/shandi conduct weekly or bi-weekly at village, block or town and city level. The study is conducted in Tumakuru, Chitradurga, Belagavi and Kalaburagi districts of Karnataka. Total sample size of 60 market intermediaries were chosen. The technique of logit regression is used to know the factors determining sale price of sheep and goat. The results of the study revealed that, per animal marketing cost incurred by sheep and goat farmers was 106.64. The farmers realized less than 82 per cent of the price paid by the butcher and wholesaler. However, the magnitude of price spread in channel-IV (17.18%), channel-II (18.45%) and channel-I (18.45%) were found to be higher than that of channel-III (8.40%). Consequently, the proportion of costs and margins of intermediaries in respective channel were considerably higher than that of channel-III, mainly due to only involvement of local trader between farmer seller and farmer buyer. The physical characteristics namely, body weight, breed, sex were influenced significantly on sale price of goat and sheep. The other factors, existence of large number of buyers in the market, festivals and season were also influenced.