Determinants for Contribution of Pineapple Growers for Export Volume in Gampaha District

Abstract
Pineapple is the third largest agricultural product after tea and coconut which has a demand in export market. Although the nature has blessed with an ideal climate for growing wide range of delicious fruits including pineapple, Sri Lanka is not in a position to meet the growing demand. Therefore, that is very important to study about the export performance of fresh pineapple in Sri Lankan context. The general objective of this study was to identify the determinants of contribution of pineapple growers for export volume in Gampaha district. A structured questionnaire based survey was carried out to collect the data from random sample of 130 pineapple growers in Dompe and Diulapitiya DS divisions in Gampaha district. Tobit model was used to find out the relationship between dependent variable and other explanatory variables, and descriptive analysis was used to explain the characteristics of the sample. The result of Tobit model revealed that the contribution of pineapple growers for exports of pineapple was significantly determined by the age of grower, experience of the grower, pineapple cultivated land extent, amount supply for local market, domestic price and export price. The specific objectives of this study were to study the past export performance of fresh pineapple since 1990 to 2012 in Sri Lanka and to develop the forecasting model and the generalized model for fresh pineapple exports in Sri Lanka. There was an upward trend from 1990 to 2004 and trend was declined from 2004 to 2012 with some fluctuations. The reason was that the export of preserved pineapple has shown a significant improvement within last few years. The other specific objective was to develop the forecast model for future forecast and generalized model for current situation analysis for fresh pineapple exports in Sri Lanka. VectorAutoregressive Model was used to develop the forecast model and the generalized model was developed without considering the time factor. The result revealed that the export of fresh pineapple was significantly determined by the average exchange rate and the domestic price. Keywords: Export performance, Fresh pineapple, Gampaha district, Tobit model, Vector Autoregressive Model
Description
Keywords
Agriculture, Export Agriculture, Fruit Cultivation, Entrepreneurial Agriculture
Citation