An economic analysis of production and marketing of fish in West Bengal
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Date
2021-10
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G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar - 263145 (Uttarakhand)
Abstract
Fisheries sector have been identified as one of the most important sectors of agriculture. Fish is a valuable source of food enriched with animal protein. Asia is the largest center of aquaculture production, and currently more than 90 percent of the global aquaculture production comes from Asian countries. Presently, India is the third largest fish producing country in the world with total production of 14.164 million tonnes followed by China and Indonesia. West Bengal is the sixth largest economy of India and constituting about 23.09 per cent of Inland water resources of India. West Bengal (1.62 million tonnes) ranks second in Inland fish production after Andhra Pradesh. The present study was conducted in West Bengal to study the trends in production of Inland fisheries in the state, to work out the cost of and returns from fish farming in the study area, to identify the marketing channels and to work out the efficiency of different channels, to identify the constraints in the production and marketing of fish farming. Fish producing farmers have been found middle aged group (36-50), mostly educated up to primary with average land and pond holding of 1.29 and 0.73 hectare, respectively. The total investment for establishing fish pond in the study area was worked out to be around Rs. 192168.00/- per hectare. The total cost of production was Rs. 4,58,182.07/- per hectare. Variable cost constituted about 95.07 per cent of the total cost of Rs. 435618.40/- and fixed cost about 4.92 per cent of the total cost (Rs. 22,563.67/-). The gross and net return from fish production was Rs. 10,29,000.00/- and Rs.5,70,817.93/- per hectare, respectively. The return per rupee investment in the study area was around Rs.1.24 /-. The resource use efficiency revealed that the resources are not optimally utilized in the fish production. Majority of the fish producers marketed their fish in channel III followed by channel II and channel I. Producers share in consumer rupee and marketing efficiency was highest in channel I followed by channel II and III for all the three breeds (catla, rohu and mrigal) of fish. It was observed that majority of the fish producers expressed the problem on loss of produce due to perishability, shortage of water during summer and non-availability of labour in time. Marketing problem associated with fish producers were high marketing cost, lack of organized marketing system and non-availability of cold storage.