Authors:
Kumari K.A.T.S., Dissanayake C.A.K., Herath M.M.,
Somakanthan N., Wasantha P.G.L., Senawirathne S.H.R.L. |
Abstract:
Sri Lanka is primarily an agricultural country. Agriculture plays a vital role in its terms of food
safety, value addition, export earnings and employment. Various types of vegetables are grown
in rural areas in small homesteads and large agricultural land for both consumption and
commercial purposes. Commercial vegetable marketing system has an integrated supply chain
system which influenced by different intermediaries and their activities to take vegetable from
producers to ultimate consumers. The regulatory framework affects the food supply chain at all
levels from the agricultural sector down to the retail sector. This causes to increase consumer
prices of the commodities while having low price to the farmers. To overcome this issue, it is
needed to identify the cost factors which are affected to the price increasing. Both primary and
secondary data gathered for this research and descriptive and non-descriptive methods were used
for the data analysis process. According to the study it shows that vegetable supply chains in Sri
Lanka consist of at least six types of stake holder segments. At each step of a supply chain, the
cost is added to the product and it leads to increase the price consequently. As it is an inefficient
and long chain of market intermediary cause’s price increase dramatically from farmer to
consumer. The cost of production, cost of labor, packaging cost, post-harvest loss, and profit at
each stage, commission, hauler fee, transport cost were significant cost factors along the supply
chain. Indeed, cost of production, post-harvest losses and the profit at each level were highly
contributing cost factors. |
