The question is whether or not the Produce Exchange and Packinghouse System is relevant during this era of globalization. The following paper on Marketing was taken from a Technical Centre of Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA) seminar. Should marketing in The Bahamas become the sole responsibly of the Private Sector? This paper may provide some guidelines.
Market orientation
Market orientation is a concept which implies different things to different people. To some, it means the exposure of agriculture to the full impact of market forces by the withdrawal of all forms of State intervention. To others it may mean no more than the attempt by a farmer to improve returns by involvement in value added activities. In general, however, it can be seen that market orientation is a way of doing things which reflects the extent to which production and marketing decisions are based on market information. The degree of market orientation may be measured by the level of market knowledge and by the market skill and the commercial attitude of the decision maker in the business. Moreover, market orientation applies not only to the farmer but to all those involved in the food chain.
Implications for the structure of farming
To many, market orientation implies the continuing industrialization of the agro-food sector, bringing with it a corresponding decline in the number of farmers and the aggregation of farm holdings into a relatively small number of larger farms. Even if these remain family owned and operated they would become integrated into the corporate processing and marketing chain by contractual ties. This is what has happened in the developed economies. However, uniformity of scale is unlikely. Even in the more mature economies, large numbers of small family units still operate whose contribution to agricultural output is regarded as marginal. For example, in the European Union some of agricultural output is derived from probably no more than of its farmers. Similar differentiation exists to varying degrees in all countries and this is a factor which policy makers have to take into account.
It has been calculated that a threshold of US$10,000 GDP per head is necessary to trigger and sustain a consumer-led transition to an industrialized food chain. In practice, however, the distribution of income is very uneven. The majority of consumers in ACP economies are unlikely to find themselves totally integrated within an industrialized food system.
This situation and the challenges presented by demographic change and continuing urbanization (stimulating the development of periurban forms of agriculture) underline the need for consistent advocacy by farming and rural people of the case for clearly defined and promoted policies for agriculture and the rural economy. A case can also be argued for a better definition of the roles of farmers, farming organizations, private sector businesses and government. A framework of instruments is required which encourages and rewards those who meet economic and social aims of national policy.
Principles, not “recipes”
In most economies the structure of agro-industry comprises a lattice or mesh of integrated chains of commercial farming directed towards the most rewarding sectors of the domestic market, the tourist industry and the export market. Between these larger chains is small scale and subsistence farming, based around the food needs of the family unit. Thus different farmer strategies and degrees of market orientation are both inevitable, and in the sense of a diversified rural economy, desirable. Small scale farmers may well be marginal in the agro-food complex but they are an important element of the much wider debate about rural society in general, including the desirability of developing diversity in rural employment, the use of natural resources and the value of environmental products such as natural flora and fauna.
These small farms represent an alternative strategy for rural society based on traditional farming practices centred on subsistence and local, informal market networks. Policy makers must recognize both approaches and help to resolve social and resource constraints, including such factors as the conflicts which may arise between farming, wildlife and related tourist activities. There must also be policies in place to allow intervention when inappropriate agriculture practices result in a degradation of the environment and threaten the sustainability of the system.
By: Godfrey Eneas, The Bahama Journal
