Understanding the domestic market of organic foods: analyzing consumers perspective on soil health and their willingness to pay for organic foods in Delhi

Student name: Ms Deepali Vaish
Guide: Prof Kanchan Chopra
Year of completion: 2015
Host Organisation: TERI University

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Abstract: Organic farming has emerged as an ecologically sustainable solution to make the food production system more ecologically sustainable. In addition to this, organic foods are beneficial for human health in the sense that they are more nutritious than inorganic foods. But the domestic market of organic foods is somewhat shaky as compared to international market. From demand side, there is not much enthusiasm seen for organic foods. Therefore this paper is an attempt to see sustainable agriculture from demand side. For this, primary survey of households is undertaken in Delhi using Contingent Valuation Method and afterwards consumers‟ awareness about the soil problem was studied through consumers‟ responses and regression analysis was carried out to see the factors affecting awareness and factors affecting willingness to pay of consumers. It was also found out that willingness to pay is not uniform across consumers and within a single food grain organic price premium varied due to different brands. Keywords: Green Revolution, Nutritional deficiency, Organic foods, domestic market, Contingent Valuation Method, consumers‟ awareness, willingness to pay