Chandra DevSangita2019-02-022019-02-022018-08http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810093331Agriculture is incontestably the biggest livelihood provider in Indian economy mostly in the rural areas. It not only provides food and nutritional security but also plays a significant role in employment, production, demand and supply generation activity through forward and backward linkages. India is considered to be the ancient home of perfumes and aromatic plants because it is blessed with wide variety of climate and soil condition. They are achieving significant consideration all over the world due to their vast intact economic potential, particularly in the herbal sector. Mentha arvensis (menthol mint) is an essential oil bearing plant and widely used in food, flavoure, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. Among the aromatic crop, mentha is important crop as India is the largest producer, consumer, as well as exporter of mentha. In India mentha covers an area of about 0.32M ha with the production of 0.041mt in India. It contributes about 80 percent of total mint production in the world followed by China (9%), Brazil (7%) and USA (4%). The present study was conducted in Udham Singh Nagar district of Uttarakhand. The study was based on sample survey of 60 mentha growing farmers and 6 marketing intermediaries were selected from three blocks of Udham Singh Nagar district namely Gadarpur, Bajpur and Kashipur. The study aimed to achieve four objectives viz, to study the socio-economic status of mentha growing farmers, to estimate the cost and returns in production of mentha, to identify existing marketing channels for menthe and to estimate marketing efficiency of different channels and to identify the constraints faced by the mentha growers. The result revealed that majority of mentha growing farmers were in the old age group (>50 years). The average family size of mentha growers was 6.13. The majority of the farmer was literate (66.67%). The major investment items were small equipments which constitutes 52.9 percent of the total investment. Sprayer, tube well, and tractor constitutes 12.46, 7.20, 5.54 percent respectively at an aggregate level. The total cost of cultivation was estimated to be Rs.92039.62 per hectare. The net return over total cost was found to be Rs.17886.26 per hectare. The major marketing channels were channel-I (Producer-Local trader-Industry), channel-II (Producer-Local trader-Registered trader-Industry). The net price received by the farmers for the channel I and channel II was Rs. 115.83 and Rs. 1115.66 per litre. For channel-I producer’s share in consumer rupee was found to be 97.02 percent and for channel II it was 95.35 percent. Marketing efficiency was calculated 32.65 for the channel I followed by channel II i.e.20.53 respectively. It was seen that marketing channel I was most efficient than channel II. The untimely rain, high cost of input, fluctuation in prices, lack of organized marketing channels, lack of price support policy, lack of extraction unit were reported to be most sever production, marketing and infrastructural and institutional constraints faced by mentha growing farmers in the study area.ennullThesis