Arati Chapai¹ , Susma Adhikari¹ , Kiran Prasad Upadhayaya² , Shova Shrestha¹ , Nisha Bhandari¹ , Prativa Acharya¹ , Shasi Kumar Keshari¹

1 College of Natural Resource Management, Bardibas, Agriculture and Forestry University, 44800, Nepal
2 Agriculture Section, Madi Municipality, Chitwan, 44209, Nepal
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Horticulture, 2024, Vol. 14, No. 2   doi: 10.5376/ijh.2024.14.0006
Received: 21 Feb., 2024    Accepted: 20 Mar., 2024    Published: 06 Apr., 2024

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Chapai A., Adhikari S., Upadhayaya K.P., Shrestha S., Bhandari N., Acharya P., and Keshari S.K., 2024, Economic analysis of apple production and marketing in raskot municipality of Kalikot District, Nepal, International Journal of Horticulture, 14(2): 44-58 (doi: 10.5376/ijh.2024.14.0006)

A survey research study on the economic analysis of apple production and marketing was undertaken in the Raskot municipalities of Kalikot district. The study aimed to analyze the past economics of apple production, including its marketing aspects, and identify the problems associated with apple production and marketing. A total of 78 farmers were selected through simple random sampling, while snowball sampling was utilized to choose 10 traders for the survey. A pretested semi-structured questionnaire was employed to collect data from the respondents. Data analysis was carried out using SPSS and MS Excel. The majority of the respondents were Brahmin and literate. Agriculture had been the primary source of income for 55.12% of households. On average, surveyed households had 6.28 ropani of land under apple production, with an average of 136.47 bearing fruits and 33.28 non-bearing trees, including newly planted ones. Economic analysis over a 20-year period revealed a benefit-cost ratio of 1.90, a net present value of Rs 2,111,002.92, an internal rate of return of 33.3%, and a payback period of 7.3 years. During the study, it was found that the majority of farmers (94%) had sold their produce to contractors through hedging practices, with a marketing margin and producer share of Rs 172 and 21.81%, respectively. The primary problem identified for apple production had been the incidence of insect pests and diseases. Similarly, price variation had been a major issue associated with the marketing of apples in the study area. The study concluded that apple production in Kalikot had been financially feasible, emphasizing the need for further development in alternate pest and disease management strategies and intervention in the development of a marketing system to control higher price variation.

Economic analysis; Production; Marketing; Net present value; Payback period; Internal rate of return