Abstract:
Potato is a highly demanded root crop in Sri Lanka while the land extent of
potato cultivation is about 5,000 ha. The average annual production is around
80,000 metric tons. However, the year-round availability of potato is depending
on industrial-scale storage and potato yield. Sri Lanka does not have a sound
solution for potato storage problem yet. Therefore, the present study aims to
identify the present situation of storage facilities and farmer education level on
potato to reduce post-harvest losses and imports with the almost expanding
potato market in off season. The study was based on primary data gathered
through pre-structured questionnaires from 100 potato farmers selected using
the snowball sampling technique. Out of 100 farmers, 48 farmers were selected
from Nuwara-Eliya district and others were selected from Badulla district. Data
analysis was done using descriptive and interracial statistics with support of
minitab-16 software. Results indicated that, there are strong relationships with
farmer education level between availability of the storage facilities (p value=0.000), farmer willingness to store potato (p-value=0.000) and neediness
for convenient storage facilities (p-value=0.005). Educated farmers are most like
to store potatoes to use during off season. However, majority (76%) of farmers
do not have convenient storage facilities. Therefore, most (46%) of them never
store potatoes and sell total harvest at lower price as soon as possible from
harvested date. However, 87% of them need convenient storage facilities.
Therefore, the present study has clearly brought out the urgency of convenient
storage facilities for potato in order to expand potato market. Most importantly,
appropriate knowledge delivery method while enhancing the education status is
needed to encourage potato storage in Sri Lanka which ensures food security
and poverty reduction. This further helps to reduce post-harvest losses and
potato imports in Sri Lanka. Also, this study will be continued to identify the
effect of other factors on the potato storage.
