Market integration of selected tomato markets in Northern India Kaur Gurleen*, Singh Gurlal, Kaur Parminder Department of Economics and Sociology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141004, Punjab *Corresponding author: kaurguri428@gmail.com
Online published on 3 June, 2021. Abstract Vegetable production could be one of the best alternatives to break wheat-paddy rotation in the northern India. Among all the vegetables, tomato crop is a major vegetable crop after potato, chillies and peas. The study was conducted to assess the integration of tomato markets in northern India.. The present study was supported by the monthly wholesale prices of tomato data for the period of 201119 in the four national markets of India namely Amritsar, Ludhiana, Shimla and Delhi. The instability in the prices of vegetables is influenced by the number of factors such as variation in production, low price elasticity of demand, perishability and seasonality. Time series analysis of monthly prices indicated that seasonal price index does not follow any particular trend in these markets. The intra price rise (IPR), Average seasonal price variation (ASPV) and the coefficient of variation were found to be highest in Delhi and lowest for Shimla. The higher seasonal indices of all the markets were observed during the months of July-August-September-November. This was due to the early influx of monsoon which partially damaged tomato crop and led to tremendous effect on the supply and afterwards higher prices. The wholesale price series of tomato in Shimla, Delhi and Ludhiana markets were stationery at original series except Amritsar market which became stationery after first order differencing. Johensen's co-integration and Granger causality test was used to analyze the long run relationship among markets. All the markets were co-integrated with each other and were having a long run relationship. Majority of the markets were having a bidirectional price relationship and few have shown unidirectional/non-price movements. Top Keywords Integration, Market, Seasonality, Tomato, Vegetable. Top |