Marketing Losses of Green Onions sold in Public markets in Davao City

I. Rationale

Vegetables are become worldwide in very nearly 200 countries and make up a
significant bit of the eating routine of people in any parts of the world and it plays a
significant role of humans’ nutrition (Wargovich, 2000; Liua et al., 2001). A world
vegetable overview indicated that 392 vegetable crops are developed around the world,
speaking to 70 families and 225 genera (Kays and Dias, 1995).

Vegetables are inherently perishable hence they are considered as one of the most
wasted categories of food and the reasons why marketing vegetables in the Philippines
is encountering difficulties such as rapid fluctuation of price, inappropriate handling of
products, insufficient storage, transport facilities, and lack of market information. Retailers
and wholesalers additionally absence of facilities and information to counteract the fast
deterioration of vegetables such as softening, yellowing, and other physical damages
(Caberte, 2002). Vegetables are much less hardy mostly quickly rotten. This high valued
and nutritious crop will deteriorate in a matter of days or even hours which will become
unfit for human consumption. Thus, a progression of advanced have been created and
applied in dealing with vegetable over the most recent couple of decades. But
unfortunately, many Asian countries don’t have this advancement of technology due to
cost or adoptability problems thus marketing losses in vegetable remain to be high (Liu,
1991).

Vegetables are created and can be showcased all over the place. The green onion (Allium
fistulosum L.) belongs to the family of the Aliaceae, and is used as condiment and
seasoning, it is originally from Siberia or the East, being cultivated in annual or biennial
form. It has morphological characteristics similar to the onion, however, it does not form
bulbs, but a thickening in the stem bases (CAMARGO, 1992). The green onion is a highly
perishable vegetable, due to its moisture content, high metabolic rate and deficient
postharvest management and transport of the same (GONZÁLES et al., 2012).This
vegetable will go through the marketing system before arriving at the shoppers
considering the traveled distance, inadequate transport, and taking care of facilities that
we have, a ton of marketing losses are projected. Marketing losses are observed to have
many different forms. This might be in quantitative loss, such as reduction in weight and
partial or total waste of production due to decay or senescence. A discernible loss is a
quantitative one such as deterioration in texture, flavor or nutritional value, other forms
include loss of viability or propagates and reduction in monetary value to reduce prices
(Caberte, 2006).

The importance of this study is to help improve the efficiency of the marketing system by
identifying the forms, volume and value of loss in marketing and factors or causes of loss
in “Green Onions” sold in public markets in Davao city.

Objectives of the Study

The general objective of the study is to determine the marketing losses of Green
Onions sold in the major public markets of Davao City.

Specifically, the study attempts to:

1. Estimate the value of losses at different marketing stages;

2. Determine the causes or factors that contribute to marketing losses; and
3. Determine the coping mechanisms that marketing agents adopt to mitigate the
marketing losses.
Methodology

Theoretical and Conceptual Framework

Marketing margin is the difference between prices at different levels of the marketing
system. It can also be defined as the difference between what the consumer pays and
what the producer receives for his agricultural produce. It is alleged that a wide margin
means high prices to consumers and low prices and incomes to producers. In other
words, a wide margin implies an inefficient marketing system and vice versa. Wide margin
may be due to excessive marketing cost (Abbot and Makeham, 1979). Retailers
themselves may incur high cost because of inadequate transport, storage and handling
facilities and methods which cause heavy losses and product deterioration in quality and
enhanced market risk. The cost of marketing varies considerably from product to product.
A perishable product like vegetables will require more careful physical handling, both in
storage and during transit. The less perishable the commodity the less is the share of the
consumer peso that goes to marketing cost (Piadozo, 1987).

Miranda (1990) said that physical functions add form, time, and place utility (value) to
commodities. Storage adds time utility to a product by holding it from harvest or production
and distributing it on the market overtime as it is needed. This storage function occurs at
all levels in marketing channel. Transportation adds place utility to a commodity.
Transportation includes moving commodities from the farm to retailers. The success of
marketing depends much on good means of transportation. Obviously, lack of good farm-
to-market roads necessarily restricts the transfer of farm products to the best market
outlets available. Spoilage or deterioration of goods especially the perishable ones, may
occur when transportation or storage facilities are unavailable. When enormous quantities
of perishable goods arrive in a market at one time, some of the commodities may spoil
before they can all be disposed of, unless cold storage facilities are available. To avoid
deterioration when storage facilities are not available, the retailers little or no profit at all.
This happen often in the case of agricultural products such as fruits and vegetables.
 Miranda (1990) also added that losses of commodities through pilferage may be high
where goods are temporarily kept without adequate protection. Pilferage does not exempt
goods such as vegetables and fruits which have high value.

Many business firms have closed shop owing to sudden changes in price levels which
they did not foresee. Prices of vegetables may suddenly go down because of unexpected
bountiful harvests and unexpected deliveries from other supply points. The wholesalers
who keeps large stock to meet obligations. This is likely to happen because of inadequate
market information in our vegetable market system. If traders are not well informed then
there is a great probability that one market will be over supplied (Miranda, 1990).

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