Income Generation of Rural Farmersthrough Vegetables and Fruits Co- Operatives in Chitwan District

Abstract

he study was conducted to assess the role of the fruits and vegetable producers’cooperatives in the income generation of the rural farmers. The study primarily aimedto figure out the efforts that the cooperatives were making in marketing the product ofthe concerned farmers and the profit they had earned from the sale of their product bysubtracting the expenditures. During the study sampled farmers and stakeholderswere asked different questions in order to collect the information about the abovementioned concerns. Primary as well as secondary, both, type of methods wereapplied to collect the data. Primary method included closed ended and open-endedquestionnaire, structured as well as unstructured interview schedules and fieldobservation; and secondary data were collected from various publications, journals,research reports, minute books etc.After the processing, data was analyzed by using the computers and through manualworks. The study showed that fruits and vegetable cooperatives had not been helpingthe farmers much in marketing their products, which is a basic requirement forincome generation: only one of the cooperatives had maintained its own collectioncenter; none of them had been able to manage the chilling facility, and transportationfacility. Only one of them had maintained sales depot; and only one of them hadassigned sales agent in the market. Advertising had never been done; and qualitycontrol had occurred only on the desire and skill of the farmers themselves.However, farmers had been able to earn some profit, out of the total samples 91.9%had been able to earn profit andonly 8.1% of them had to bear loss. But the level ofearning was very nominal; 32.3% of them earned only less than 25,000NRs or boreloss, and 45.2% earned only less than 50,000NRs.In spite of these figures 51.6% of farmers were satisfied from the role of theircooperatives in their income generation. Out of remaining other, 9.7% said that theywere normally satisfied, and another 9.7% said that they were not much satisfied fromthe role of their cooperatives. Number of those who said they were not satisfied wasalso considerable; it was 22.6% out of total respondents.It seems that such cooperatives can be important tool of poverty reduction but conceptual and procedural training should be given to the stakeholders and farmersof the concerned cooperatives in order to familiarize them to the spirit and theprinciples of the cooperatives.