Red cabbage, is the demand there and is it worth it over normal cabbage?
3 Answers
Red cabbage grows almost exactly like ordinary cabbage but sells into a more premium, city-focused channel: supermarkets, hotels, restaurants, salad makers and quick commerce, where it is valued for colour in salads and slaws. It usually fetches a premium over green cabbage but the total demand is much smaller, so it is not a bulk mandi crop. For a small farmer near a city it is worth slotting a modest area of red cabbage into an exotic basket alongside other crops, against a buyer or aggregator, rather than planting a lot on speculation. Confirm the premium and local buyers before scaling. The agronomy is the easy part; the market is the constraint.
Red cabbage grows just like my green cabbage but sells for more to the retail chain. I keep the area small though, because the demand is limited compared to green.
I add red cabbage to my mixed exotic supply for a Mumbai aggregator. It is the colour they want for salad packs, but only in small steady quantity.