Marine fish marketing trend in Kerala

The paper deals with the fish marketing system prevailing in Kerala, the price structure, seasonal and spatial price variations, marketing margins of commercially important varieties varieties of fish and the share of fishermen as well as middlemen in consumer's rupee. Data on fish prices at the primary market (landing centre), wholesale and consumer markets have been collected by direct observation at the time of actual transaction and the informations on tranportation and handling charges and other marketing aspects have been collected from the middlemen involved at different stages of marketing during the period 1984-86 covering pre-monsoon, monsoon and post-monsoon seasons. The landing-wholesale-retail price relationship has also been studied. The study revealed that due to lack of infrastructure facilities the supply of fish at the landing centre is highly inelastic which often woixld be resulted in disposal of fish at throw-away prices at the time of heavy landings. The involvement of a number of middlemen in the marketing chain adversely affects the interest of both fishermen and consumer. Fishermen's share in consumer's rupee varied from an average of about 40% for cheaper variaties of fish to about 65% for high priced varietes. There has been a considerable increase in the marketing expenditure over the recent years