Applicability of ARIMA Models in Wholesale Vegetable Market: An Investigation

To investigate the applicability of ARIMA models in wholesale vegetable market models are built taking sales data of one perishable vegetable from Ahmedabad wholesales market in India. It is found that these models can be applied to forecast the demand with Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) in the range of 20%. This error is acceptable in fresh produce market where the demand and prices are highly unstable. The model is successfully validated using sales data of another vegetable from the same market. This model can facilitate the farmers and wholesalers in effective decision making.