Dear Sugun Sharma, it is really interesting question. What I believe is the produce has to get competitive market in such a way to benefit both producers and marketers. Hence, it is a direct and important relation. For doing this, you can establish or integrate/relate with horizontal, vertical and backward integration to create sustainable development in agricultural activities and also improves the socioeconomic status of the communities. If it done properly, it will significantly contributes for the development of agriculture and improvement of socioeconomic status of the farmers.
Sagun, this is a fairly broad topic, but do look at publications of both the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) focusing on the link between agricultural extension / marketing on one hand and alleviating rural poverty on the other. I attach some sample publications here; their respective sites have more related materials.
http://www.ifad.org/rural/rpr2010/background/3.pdf
http://www.fao.org/3/a-i0261e.pdf
Dear Sagun,
Agricultural extensionist must tech not only technical knowledge but also marketing strategies. I real life this is not very common, but it happens like this in some places.
Regards,
Alfredo J. Escribano.
Agricultural extension is indeed very important for technology dissemination to farmers and resultantly increasing their socioeconomic status. This will inevitably adds to agricultural growth too. The attached publication is about BCI providing extension support to cotton farmers for improving their production management practices. It significantly increased their incomes.
The marketing was not part of this research though. Hope it helps.
Article Is ‘Better cotton’ better than conventional cotton in terms ...
Development of markets for products of small holders is a fundamental requirement for economic development. Begin with market development. Every thing else can be then be built. Our USDA project did it Armenia and it can be done again. Not only did the initial USDA project succeed, but we left behind a development model that continues our success. See first an Armenia Memoir https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bill_Miller4
Then see CARD.am
Dear All,
I do agree with markets as an early focus, but without roads to these new markets, the farmers will not be able to reach the markets with their products and the inputs will not reach the farmers.
Also the farmers need extension training, in farmer field schools or otherwise, in growing products that are marketable, but also in becoming more resilient to climate change when it threatens their products in any way.
But also economically, marketing must be feasible. Input prizes and market prizes for their products must be in an acceptable balance, otherwise the poverty remains.
So for all the above and more, there must be government policies and farming policies and training policies, to make farmer livelihoods becoming better.
Regards, Kees
Dear C.T. Stigter
You are so right You cannot have adequate markets for small holders without adequate infrastructure (roads, water, buildings and more), you must have education on appropriate technology, and you must have prices that show derived demand at the farm level that will reward farm production. Yes, all of the above must be provided at some level by a market development project and such a project will require several million dollars per year of development aid and it must extend over 5 to 10 years on carefully targeted entrepreneurs.
What you cannot have is simple minded aid to central governments that pours those millions into the technology of farm production and expect the government or the "invisiable hand of the market" to take it away.
For sustainable growth of the agriculture sector, productivity must increase, and the most important factor behind increases in productivity is investment in R & D. However, there are a number of other factors that contribute to increases in productivity that can be called "enabling environment" for the spread of technologies and practices. Among these factors are economic incentives for farmers, stronger rural education and extension services, and rural infrastructure that improve access to markets (Fuglie and Wang 2014).
Many studies show that producers with better access to markets are technically more efficient, while the importance of the location of farm in the productive efficiency is evident. Sometimes investments in R & D, extension and infrastructure may have more significant effects on productivity than direct subsidies (Latruffe 2010).
Fuglie, Keith, and Sun Ling Wang. 2014. “Productivity Growth in Global Agriculture Shifting to Developing Countries.” (2012): 1–11. http://www.choicesmagazine.org/choices-magazine/submitted-articles/productivity-growth-in-global-agriculture-s.
Latruffe, Laure. 2010. “Competitiveness , Productivity and Efficiency in the Agricultural and Agri- Food Sectors.” OECD Food, Agricultural and Agri-Food Sectors N°30(OECD Plublish): 1–63.
Several bright ideas have been shared. Let me add some basic concepts to link productivity growth, extension and marketing.
In a classic article published in 1960, Dr Clifton R Wharton Jr distinguished three meanings of subsistence. a) Subsistence production - production only for own/home consumption, b) subsistence consumption - a level f consumption that is adequate for life sustenance, c) subsistence income - a level of income that gives basic level of living. Generally speaking subsistence production implies no participation in the market but the other two categories may participate in the market yet may end up with low level consumption or income because productivity and output is low and/or because fair price is not received due to market imperfections of one kind or another including lack of information and infrastructure. Even though few such classic subsistence farmer categories may exist in reality, the significance of the concepts is that all three categories need to improve productivity and output to lift themselves up, and participation in both input and output markets is essential for that. Herein lies the link with extension, the purpose of which is to disseminate knowledge and information about choices available in production technology and marketing to improve output and income. Extension programmes may rarely reach all farmers, so targeted extension may produce best results. There is a need to identify potential targets for extension based who needs what. The literature on both extension and marketing my guide how to effectively link production, growth, marketing and consumption..
In the present developing world extension has two important issues are on low investment on extension and a concrete system in place that are mostly towards intensifying knowledge and skill of farmers. It is very much evident in most of the developing nations extension in real sense for knowledge dissemination and capacity building doesn't happen rather on distribution of inputs and implementation of development schemes. Time dedicated for enriching farmers with recent updates is far reach of extension workers as they are constrained with infrastructure and updates on agriculture for themselves.
I used to work as an agri extension worker for the Production and Marketing Analysis Service (PMAS) of the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (now under Phil. Statistics Authority) in the Philippines. Under the PMAS, we developed training modules for farmers to access marketing information such as prices (farmgate, wholesale, retail) at various trading centers near their production areas. We also developed an index called 'seasonal index' for various agri commodities. This index is computed using a 12-month moving average (ARIMA), to show price movements throughout the year. The farmers follow the movements, ususally by timing their harvest to coincide with months that have greater probability of high prices. By experience, nobody could really predict the exact prices and 'beat' the market. However, with the use of seasonal indices, most farmers enjoyed better prices for their produce than when they didn't. Also, many farmers avoided surplus seasons, and thus, were able to minimize losses. These has resulted to their income increases and ultimately improvement of their well being. Note, however, that the relationship is not direct.
In summary, my point is that agricultural marketing can be incorporated as one of the topics in many agricultural extension modules. With continuous application of what the farmers learn, the outcome of income increase and improvement of well being will follow.
Following on the discussion I will suggest to check on the experience by Chile and Uruguay which have private system to provide extension services. Chile has the longest and successful experience doing so. These services are often well connect to production, marketing and financial support to farmers. It is hardly unlikely that public extension services be re-established in developing countries.
Agricultural extension is directly related with the yield level achieved by the farmers, as it is expected that the higher level of improved production technology by farmers results in higher yield realisation and in turn higher growth and improved socio-economic status of farmers.
Well developed agricultural marketing system certainly helps farmers not only realize better returns, but also helps them concentrate on improving productivity and quality of produce.
Studies on Farmer Producer Organisations/ Producer companies/ contract farming, and so on certainly covers both these aspects, which can be referred.
We need not to link extension and marketing as they are already linked. Marketing is all about satisfying product demand profitably in the market. And in order to have demand there has to be need realization and need realization for products come from awareness which comes from extension.
We need not to link extension and marketing as they are already linked. Marketing is all about satisfying product demand profitably in the market. And in order to have demand there has to be need realization and need realization for products come from awareness which comes from extension.
We need not to link extension and marketing as they are already linked. Marketing is all about satisfying product demand profitably in the market. And in order to have demand there has to be need realization and need realization for products come from awareness which comes from extension.
Marketing Extension is largely a failed enterprise for small land holders; not because of the teaching effort, but because a pervasive problem throughout the world is the lack of agricultural marketing infrastructure to serve the market. Economic development efforts favor large farms and large marketing firms because of a misguided belief in economies to scale. Quite often the size of marketing firms is not a function of economic efficiency, but a function of misuse of market power.
researchgate.net/billrmiller
Dear All,
stumbled on a related issue as below (source at the end):
Making "ag-tech" cool
Lack of communication and an agricultural market flooded with middlemen can spell out disaster for many rural farmers in Africa. Entrepreneurs are developing technologies to help them improve production and get a fair price for their produce. Such ventures in digital and mobile technology have given rise to a new industry known as "ag-tech".
Jamila Abass and Linda Kwamboka run the Kenyan platform MFarm, a mobile app that connects Kenyan farmers with consumers via SMS messaging. Set up in 2010, MFarm also works as a virtual forum for farmers to connect with each other and get advice from industry experts.
Kwamboka said the idea came about when farmers in the news were constantly "complaining and literally crying on TV on how middlemen were taking their profits from produce sales."
Inefficiency in the agribusiness value chain has been around for a while, but Kwamboka said: "Someone had to do something about it."
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/04/africa/women-africa-farming-agriculture-startups/index.html?eref=rss_Africa
Regards, Kees
Quite succinctly, you can view the relation of agricultural marketing/extension to farmer output outcomes as a factor of production in a production function. Too often, these services are inadequate or completely absent, resulting in lower output productivity and lower realized income levels compared to potential income levels.
Agricultural marketing and technical extension services are linked in economic theory but in practice the delivery of services occurs in different channels. Adequate marketing and ready access to high quality and timely technical advisory and extensions services, contribute to productivity (better yields) and welfare gains (higher income). Too often, this is a missing market in developing countries. The agroecologic conditions may be ideal for commodity x and demand conditions for commodity x very favorable, but little or no exploitation of the opportunity materializes because of poorly functioning factor markets-- poor access to credit, poor access to technology, poor access to extension and marketing services, poor infrastructure that increases cost of production and marketing, etc. In higher income countries, ministries of agriculture, publicly funded national agricultural research centers, public universities, and private contractors combine forces to deliver these services. In less developed and emerging markets, the pattern is not uniform. Some of the more middle-income countries have government provided extension services and in a handful voucher based or outsourced private contracting systems (Chile and Paraguay) function. In most developing countries, however, the quality and coverage of agricultural extension services have deteriorated over time. Agricultural marketing services (collection and periodic dissemination of prices, availability, quality standards, demand trends--regionally, nationally, internationally) tends to be woefully underdeveloped. So good news is that mobile platforms are being used to provide agricultural marketing information--weather, prices, movements of quantities in big provincial markets--that help farmers negotiate better with middlemen or avoid them all together.
Farming business involves taking decisions on a wide variety of questions such as what products/enterprises to produce, how to produce, what inputs and technology to use, when to produce, when and where to buy inputs and sell output, where to look for input and output prices etc. Conventional extension services in developing countries have been generally designed to address production related questions. However, as agriculture become market oriented and farmers need to take production decisions primarily to respond to market demand, questions related to market become equally important as questions related to production decisions. If extension services do not change to deal with the changing reality of farming, they become less effective. Generally public extension services are slow to change compared to private extension because private extension is based on pay for services. This is the reason there is clamour for privatising extension but in poor developing countries privatisation is not a solution for smallholder producers. For them there is still strong ground for providing extension as a public good but with proper services with efficiency.
- The history of marketing extension shows significant effort and successful effort from providing information and education. What is needed are development projects that allow marketing rather than production to be the focus of effort. More importantly, such programs must provide funds that allow Extension recommendations to be put into use. For perhaps the first time USDA had this opportunity in Armenia where over a 10 year period more than 50 million dollars were devoted to the effort. The result have been phenomenal. There are now many publications that document the results, but you can start with millerbillr.com on: Also see CARD.Am and ICARE.am www.researchgate.net/profile/Bill_Miller4/publications
Progressive Research 9 (Conf. Spl. ) : 1183-1185 (2014)
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