Agricultural marketing
These services involve the planning, organizing, directing and handling of agricultural produce in such a way as to satisfy farmers, intermediaries and consumers.
Numerous interconnected activities are involved in doing this, such as planning production, growing and harvesting, grading, packing and packaging, transport, storage, agro- and food processing, provision of market information, distribution, advertising and sale.
In the past, efforts were made to develop government-run marketing bodies but these have tended to become less prominent over the years.
Licensed traders in a market will not be willing to cooperate in raising standards if they face competition from unlicensed operators outside who do not pay any of the costs involved in providing a proper service.
[7] Most governments in developing countries have tried to provide market information services to farmers, but these have tended to experience problems of sustainability.
Moreover, even when they function, the service provided is often insufficient to allow commercial decisions to be made because of time lags between data collection and dissemination.
Esoko in West Africa attempts to subsidize the cost of such services to farmers by charging access to a more advanced feature set of mobile-based tools to businesses.
[11] Agricultural marketing needs to be conducted within a supportive policy, legal, institutional, macro-economic, infrastructural and bureaucratic environment.
Traders and others are generally reluctant to make investments in an uncertain policy climate, such as those that restrict imports and exports or internal produce movement.
Inappropriate law can distort and reduce the efficiency of the market, increase the costs of doing business and retard the development of a competitive private sector.
Poor support institutions, such as agricultural extension services, municipalities that operate markets inefficiently and inadequate export promotion bodies, can be particularly damaging.
[15] Donors and NGOs are paying increasing attention to ways of promoting direct linkages between farmers and buyers[16] within a value chain context.
