Marketing Practices and Problems Faced by Flower Growers of Punjab

Flower cultivation is the fastest growing enterprise in agriculture and flower power is ceaseless to blossom in the Indian context. There is a continuous increase in demand for flower products and flower cultivation is a mercantile enterprise of agriculture. Area under flower crops in India during the year 2020–21 is 3.22 Lakh ha with production of 21.52 Lakh MT Loose Flowers & 8.28 Lakh MT Cut Flowers. So the present study was planned for flower crops in Punjab state in year 2022. Two crops i.e. Gladiolus and Marigold were selected respectively for the present study. List of flower growers of the Punjab state was procured from the Department of Floriculture & Landscaping (PAU) and Department of Horticulture, Punjab. From the list, 40 farmers cultivating each flower crop was selected through simple random sampling technique. Data were collected for 80 respondents with the help of structured interview schedule. The data collected were analyzed and interpreted based on their frequencies and percentages. The findings revealed that majority of respondents belonged to the age group of 36—50 (63.75%), studied up to secondary (38.75%), belonged to the nuclear families (77.5%), had operational land holding of 2–4 ha (42.5%) and 12–19 years of farming experience (47.5%). Study further revealed that flower growers adopted three tier marketing channel (Producer ? Wholesaler ? Retailer ? Consumer) before reaching to consumer. Most of them marketed their purchase in other districts and only 23.75 per cent of respondents market the flowers outside the Punjab. As regards to problems, majority faced problems of insect and pest, high input and labour cost, storage problems and lack of advanced flower cultivation techniques and post harvest technology. Marketing problem with mean score of 60.75 were the leading impediments in flower cultivation.