Production economics, marketing and critical success factors of Large Cardamom in Bhojpur, Nepal

Abstract

Large cardamom is a high-value spice crop grown commonly in mid-hills of Nepal. Price disparity coupled with production challenges are major immersing concerns in growth and development of this sub-sector. The study was designed in January 2019 to assess production scenario and marketing of large cardamom in Bhojpur district of Nepal. Altogether, 120 large cardamom growers and 20 traders were selected using purposive sampling technique. Data were analysed using SPSS and Ms-Excel. Cobb-Douglas production function was used to estimate the factor share to the total output production. Findings revealed that more than 45% of total annual household income was attributed by cardamom itself. Overall benefit and cost ratio was found greater than unity (1.467). Cobb-Douglas production function showed that all cardamom-growing farmers were experiencing increasing returns to scale. Higher producer’s share (90.32%) was found when farmer sell their large cardamom directly to the exporter while least producer’s share (69.21%) was found in domestic market channel with large number of intermediaries. Increase in marketing margin, marketing costs and decrease in marketing efficiency and producers’ share were observed with increase in number of marketing intermediaries and vice-versa. About 55% of the large cardamom exporters believed that the Indian market was the most responsible factor for export price determination. From study, it is recommended to strengthen market or price intervention by concerned authority and also it is high time to identify possible routes to potential international markets (besides India) to receive competitive higher price.