Constraints in the Consumption of Organic Foods in Eastern India

Abstract

The ushering of twentieth century had experienced a number of social, economic and ecological ill-effects of high input intensive agriculture- at this juncture organic agriculture can be viewed as an alternative to cope up with the challenges of high input intensive conventional agriculture. Organic food market is escalating all over the world at a high rate. Although people are aware but consumption of organic food is still low. Hence, the present study was undertaken to isolate the constraints as perceived by urban people in the access and consumption of organic food. The study was conducted in one metro city Kolkata and one non-metro Ranchi in the eastern part of India. The results revealed institutional constraints were most severe (mean value= 3.27) among different categories of constraints as perceived by respondents of Kolkata and according to respondents of Ranchi, constraints related to means to consumption were most severe (mean rank= 3.28).High price of organic foods was perceived as most severe constraint among other factors under the constraints related to means to consumption for both Kolkata and Ranchi followed by lack of easy availability of organic foods.Other important constraints as perceived by urban people were lack of awareness, inadequate advisory services and lack of government subsidies on organic foods.The research findings will help to formulate appropriate strategies that will lead to increased consumption of organic food.