164 Papaya
price and then takes papaya fruits to market. Most of the growers prefer Channel-I
for low marketing cost incurred in this channel and there was no risk of price fluc-
tuation after taking the produce to the market. In Channel II, the farmer himself has
taken the produce to distant market where he has to bear all marketing costs such
as transportation, unloading, weighment and commission charges. But no doubt, the
producer will get a better price for his produce in the market than at the farm level.
Shivannavar (2005) reported that all the papaya-growing sample farmers expressed
the severity of virus attack along with labour intensiveness and water scarcity dur-
ing papaya cultivation. The other problems were: lack of technical know-how (79%),
irregular power supply (78%), higher initial investment (68%), smaller holdings
(37%) and duplication of seeds (20%). It could be seen that all the respondents opined
that markets are far away from the farm, over 82% of the respondents opined that
higher commission charge was also another major problem in marketing of papaya.
The other problems were: lack of availability of market information (79%), storage
problem (76%), price fluctuations (37%) and lack of skilled labour for packing (19%).
15.2 ECONOMICS
Papaya is a profitable crop and provides an income next to bananas. It can be grown
for fruits, seed and for papain extraction. In a properly managed papaya orchard,
crop yield is very high and gives high amount of profit. Demand for papaya in the
United States has been growing due to many factors, including more awareness of
the fruit’s health benefits and Asian and Hispanic population growth. Tropical fruit
growers in South Florida are in search of profitable alternatives to increase revenue
and to ensure that their operations remain profitable. While there appears to be an
opportunity for these growers to take advantage of this growing market, given their
closer proximity to the market and in light of recent restrictions being placed on
papaya imported from Mexico (the number one US papaya supplier), the analysis
suggests that they are less likely to do so because of the relatively unattractive
returns associated with producing the crop under current conditions. The average
grower would invest $11,322 per acre for a net return of only $278 per acre over the
first 2-year period. Even with a singular focus on gross margin only (not advisable),
the return would be $1880 per acre or $940 per acre per year (Table 15.1). Since not
much can be done about increasing growers’ profits, growers would need to increase
their output for this to become an attractive alternative. A 10% increase in output at
current prices, for example, would cause net profit to increase by more than 300%.
At present, growers are severely constrained by the widespread presence of PRSV,
which has severely reduced the output and has limited the production cycle to only
2 years, thus, increasing the unit cost of production. Preliminary results indicate that
with modest increases in production costs and growing PRSV-resistant GM variet-
ies, growers could increase their output three- to four-fold and extend the harvesting
season by another year to compete and be profitable (Evans et al. 2012).
Generally, Indian farmers can get Rs. 35,000–40,000 from one hectare of
papaya plantation for fruits. Success stories of two farmers, one form Sholapur dis-
trict of Maharashtra and another from Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal have been
reported. Maharashtra farmers obtained a yield of 138.75 tonnes/ha with a net profit