The tomato crop plays a major nutritional and economic role in Egypt’s vegetable crop production, and in spite of all this, it is affected by the economic and political changes as well as natural and climatic conditions causing productivity and price fluctuations as well as a high percentage of marketing losses, which make it difficult to organize the supply and achieve production and marketing efficiency, which targeted for increased domestic and external demand. So the research aimed to attain the proposals that will benefit decision makers and to find out proper production and marketing policy, and therefore, benefit the farmers, consumers and the state.
Trends of the cultivated area, yield per Feddan and production of tomato indicated a statistically significant annual increase and represented about 1%, 0.88% and 1.87% of the average per year, respectively, over the period (1999-2013). Estimating the Coefficient of variation for the farm prices per ton, total production costs per ton, net return per ton and profitability pound of tomato seasons dispersed over the study period, which confirms the income instability of producers who bear the burdens and risks of the production process, which may fluctuate the cultivated tomato area and therefore, the amount of tomato production.
Studying the share of the consumer's pound was showing decline in the farmer share in the consumer’s pound where the average per year was about 42.31%, while the average of mediators’ shares of pound spent about 57.22% during the period.
Findings showed that the marketing efficiency of tomato was low and the annual average representing about 19.61% over the study period that means the marketing costs is high.
Studying the seasonal tomato prices per month using proportional trend showed that there were fluctuations over the period (2002-2013), in addition to the months of April, May, September, October and November were above the annual average, the months January, February, March, June, July, August and December were less than the annual average that mean the tomato supply is increasing during the months with low price while in contrast, the tomato supply is decreasing during the months with high price and by using the run test saw non-significant seasonal price index for tomato, which show that the seasonal price changes were random and irregular, where the supply amount decreased between the seasons, as well as exposure to diseases, insects and viral infections as a result of unfavorable climatic conditions for their growth.
The study recommends circulating the high-yield varieties, growing in high-productivity governorates, establishing factories for tomato sauce production when domestic production increases more than consumption, with the need to produce tomatoes for domestic consumption, manufacturing and export, with modern technological methods for producing and marketing tomatoes in order to reduce production and marketing costs. |
