Agricultural Marketing in Tropical Africa

Contributions of the Netherlands

H. Laurens van der Laan, Tjalling Dijkstra, Aad van Tilburg

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429863189
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

First published in 1999, this volume explores how African agriculture has always had a strong appeal for the people of the Netherlands. This is due to (1) a long-established interest in tropical agriculture going back to the days when Indonesia was a Duth colony; (2) a broad-based desire to help the Third World; and (3) the view that Tropical Africa is highly dependent on agriculture.

As practical expertise in Africa and systematic research on African agriculture grew, specialization became both possible and necessary. This volume reflects the specialization in marketing which has been welcomed by economists, geographers and scholars of agricultural marketing. In addition to a general introductory chapter, this book includes five contributions on staple food grains, two on export crops, two on cattle and one on horticulture. Nine of the chapters are country-specific, covering Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, C?te d'Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Zambia.

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Agricultural Marketing in Tropical Africa

Obstacles to Systematic Study

H. Laurens van der Laan

Abstract

This chapter explores how far the study of agricultural marketing with regard to Tropical Africa has progressed. The exploration, which follows the academic discipline of agricultural marketing as it has developed in the West, surveys the literature on agricultural marketing in Africa, using first the commodity approach, then the institutional one and finally the functional one. In each case the conclusion must be that research coverage has been highly uneven. First, many crops have been neglected. Second, even with well-researched crops, some institutions and/or functions appear to have been overlooked.

At the end of the chapter doubts are expressed about the relevance for Tropical Africa of (a) publications on agricultural marketing in the West and (b) parallel publications for the non-Western world. These doubts reflect the author’s conviction that Tropical Africa is different from Asia and Latin America and that this situation justifies a geographically specialized subdiscipline called ‘Agricultural Marketing in Tropical Africa’.

1.1 Introduction

The study of agricultural marketing in Tropical Africa has made great strides since World War II. This should not, however, be a cause for complacency because on closer inspection we find that many topics have been neglected and some fundamental questions overlooked. In this chapter I want to review the achievements and shortcomings of research in this field.¹

This chapter is arranged as follows. In the first section I sketch the academic discipline of agricultural marketing as it has developed in the West. This provides a matrix for the discussion in the next three sections, where I offer some comments on (a) the situation regarding agricultural marketing in Tropical Africa and (b) the corresponding literature. In the final sections I formulate some fundamental questions which hopefully pave the way for a comprehensive publication project on this subject.

1.2 The academic discipline of agricultural marketing

Agricultural marketing has emerged as a separate discipline in many countries, notably in the countries of the West (for a definition, see below). This discipline is primarily distinguished by its subject matter and approach.

The subject matter of agricultural marketing is clearly demarcated. Scholars confine their attention to agricultural products.² They do so because they are convinced that these products have special features. While ready to remain within the general discipline of economics, they consider its general concepts of ‘products’ and ‘services’ too wide and therefore less useful.³ Table 1.1 lists five major characteristics which distinguish agricultural production from production in general.

Table 1.1 Characteristics of agricultural production and their effect on marketing

Characteristics	Consequences for marketing activities
(1) specific location small-scale activity seasonality perishability of product natural variation of product	(2) collection followed by distribution assembling and collecting, bulking seasonal storage, stock-holding on-farm or nearby off-farm preservation sorting and standardization

Let me briefly elaborate on column 1. First, agricultural production is tied to specific locations because either the soils or the climate do not encourage or permit cultivation at other locations. Second, the scale of agricultural production tends to be small. Indeed, the majority of the world’s agricultural enterprises are family farms with a limited labour force. Third, agricultural production tends to be seasonal. The product is not available throughout the year, but during the harvest season only.⁴ Fourth, nearly all agricultural products are perishable: the quality deteriorates – quickly with some products, slowly with others. Fifth, agricultural products exhibit a natural variation: botanical units, even of the same variety, are not identical.

We now turn to column 2. The first two production characteristics combine to make the collecting or assembling aspect of agricultural marketing crucial. In particular if the scale of production is small and that of trade large, there is a strong convergence pattern in agricultural marketing. As a result the relationship (or nexus) between the farmer and the collecting trader⁵ deserves special attention. Seasonality, the third characteristic, requires considerable storage for staple food crops, that is, crops which consumers want to eat as daily food throughout the year. This storage activity is only possible if the product is durable or storable (see below). Seasonal stocks explicitly introduce the time factor into the analysis. The same is true for perishability, but here time manifests itself in tight schedules to get the product preserved or transported from the farmer to the buyer.⁶ Finally, since for those involved in agricultural marketing natural variation is a commercial disadvantage, they try to improve their economic position by adopting widely accepted standards (or grades) and by sorting their harvest accordingly. Sorting, which has been defined as “classifying a mixed lot of produce into homogeneous categories” (Kohls & Uhl, 1990, 534), is a useful and profitable activity, performed by either the farmers or the collecting traders. The five features presented in Table I (and some minor features not mentioned here) justify special teaching courses on ‘agricultural economics’ and ‘agricultural marketing’. In my view they should be treated as subdisciplines within the discipline of economics.

Often ‘food marketing’ and ‘agricultural marketing’ are studied and taught together.⁷ There are strong arguments for this combination. First, many agricultural products end up as food for human beings. Second, it creates a framework for studying both the producers and the consumers. They depend on each other, but they also have conflicting interests, for instance, with regard to prices. Third, when producers and consumers live in the same country, the government is often drawn into the role of referee. But there are also arguments against. For instance, while most agricultural products are ‘unbranded’, many food products are sold under a brand name.⁸ Marketing of the latter normally involves ‘marketing management’ in the sense of sales promotion, advertising, monopolistic competition, etc. The marketing of unbranded products lacks these elements and takes place in competitive markets. As a result food marketing (of branded foods) tends to be interdisciplinary, combining psychology and sociology with economics, whereas agricultural marketing (of unbranded products) is more mono-disciplinary, using economics almost exclusively. We return to this point later.

The discipline of agricultural marketing is also shaped by its approach. It tends to take the farmer (or the farm)⁹ as its starting point. This gives unity to the discipline, but also dictates priorities. The farmer’s point of view and his interests come first. This explains the prevalence of pro-farmer feelings in this discipline. The views of the consumers, industrial buyers and the government take second place.¹⁰

Many farmers are aware of (a) the physical distance between producer and consumer and (b) the time interval between harvesting and consumption. This awareness is shared by scholars of agricultural marketing, most of whom recognize a ‘product flow’ which records how the agricultural product moves from the point of production to the point of consumption. These scholars favour analytical approaches based on the product flow, such as the marketing chain or the marketing channel (Stern, El-Ansary & Coughlan, 1996). These approaches are, however, marginal in general economic theory.

In studying the phenomena of agricultural marketing, three alternative approaches have proved useful: the commodity, the institutional and the functional approach. The commodity approach takes individual crops or groups of crops as its starting point. The institutional approach concentrates on the institutions and actors, that is, first of all, the enterprises which produce, process and distribute agricultural products. The legal status of these enterprises may vary. Thus, there are private, public and cooperative enterprises. Other institutions are the markets, in particular the physical markets where buyers and sellers meet face to face, and the trade associations whose aim is to organize markets and facilitate trade. In the functional approach we focus on the activities of the actors. Table 1.4 in Section 1.5 presents a list of functions. Here it suffices to say that in general the totality of the functions remains the same, even when the institutions in a marketing system are reorganized and the tasks reshuffled between the actors.¹¹

Having surveyed the discipline as it has developed in the West, we have a working matrix for comments on the situation in Africa. Before offering my comments five preliminary remarks are appropriate. First, while I gained some firsthand knowledge of the situation during fieldwork in Sierra Leone and four other African countries, most of my knowledge is based on the literature. Second, I have not confined my reading to publications that carry the words ‘agricultural marketing’ in their title. (If I had done so, I would have missed a great deal of valuable information.) Third, much of the literature consists of inaccessible ‘grey literature’. Those who commissioned research, both officials and businessmen, were often content with a simple publication because the intended readership was small. Fourth, the literature consists mainly of empirical material or case studies. There is as yet little theory that is specifically African. Fifth, references are given selectively and sparingly, in order to avoid an excessive list. For the same reason there are no references to the other contributions in this volume.

1.3 The commodity approach: comments

We must now turn to the situation in Tropical Africa. When considering the literature crop by crop we find that research coverage has been most uneven. Table 1.2 identifies four broad categories of crop.

Table 1.2 Research coverage of major categories of crop

export crops staple food crops (durable) staple food crops (perishable) other crops

well covered well covered poorly covered neglected

The fact that much research has been done on export crops undoubtedly has an economic explanation. During the colonial period it was thought that the best form of economic development consisted of stimulating exports. African farmers were encouraged (or forced) to grow export crops. After independence the academic climate changed and it became popular to associate export crops with distorted development or even economic decline. This fostered fresh, critical research on export crops and kept them in the limelight.

A subsidiary area of research has been the transport of export crops. In the early colonial period, lack of cheap transport was seen as the chief obstacle to export-oriented development. Since the study of transport was the special province of geography, this discipline was encouraged. Geo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of maps
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• 1. Agricultural marketing in Tropical Africa
• 2. Maize marketing policies in Tanzania, 1939-1998
• 3. Maize marketing in Kenya, 1976-1996
• 4. Food grain marketing in Burkina Faso since 1970
• 5. Cocoa marketing in Ghana and Cameroon
• 6. The coffee sectors of Côte d’lvoire and Costa Rica
• 7. Primary rice marketing in North-West Sierra Leone
• 8. Maize and bean marketing in Benin
• 9. Horticultural marketing in Kenya
• 10. Cattle marketing in Zambia, 1965-1995
• 11. Cross-border cattle marketing in Sub-Saharan Africa since 1900
• About the authors
• Index