Marketing Activities in Agriculture

What is a Market?

The place where producers and consumers meet to sell and buy their materials is known as a market.

Customers usually buy goods at a market. Producers or farmers have to find ways for their agricultural products to be distributed from their places of production to markets where they can be bought by the final consumers.

What is Agricultural Marketing?

Agricultural marketing involves all activities, from gathering agricultural produce from farms to getting them to the final consumers.

These activities include assembling, storage, processing, transportation, packaging, grading and distribution of different agricultural commodities across the country. Let’s describe these activities.

Marketing Activities in Agriculture:

1. Purchasing & Assembling:

Assembling is usually done by assemblers and it involves going from one farm to another and gathering large quantities to make them available for the buyers. Distribution activities follow after assembling.

2. Grading and Sorting:

This means sorting products into different grades according to the quality specifications laid down. This specification describes things like the ideal quality, shape, size, flavour etc. For example, 2 grades for apple, grade 1 and grade 2 with grade 2 being the higher grade because of its bigger size.

Grading enables producers to get higher prices for their produce as most consumers prefer buying better quality products at higher prices.

3. Processing:

Agricultural processing is defined as one or more of the operations that convert agricultural products into forms, that increase their utilitythe state of being useful, profitable, or beneficial. More and value and are ready for the final consumers. Proper, efficient processing prevents deterioration and ensures a quality product.

4. Packaging:

This helps to preserve the agricultural products and makes for easy handling so they can be distributed and transported easily. The materials used include boxes, jute bags, bottles, crates, trays etc.

5. Storage or Warehousing:

This involves storing agricultural products for future sale. Storage is important to preserve the quality of farm produce and also increase the shelf life of the product. Examples of storage structures are; silos, rhombus, cribs, yam barns, tins, sacks, and drums.

Agricultural produce can also be stored in a warehouse on a large scale and made available when needed. Warehousing helps in stabilizing distribution without creating shortages.

6. Transportation:

This involves moving the agricultural products from where they are stored, or from the farm to the market, where they can be purchased by the end users.

Loading: This is the process of loading agricultural produce in large quantities onto a vehicle so they can be distributed to specific companies, markets or middlemen.

Offloading: This is the removal of agricultural produce from vehicles when they get to the point of arrival for distribution e.g. market.

7. Advertisements:

This practice is connected with the display or exhibition of the farm product to the buyer for awareness. This can be done verbally, through newspapers, billboards, etc.

8. Pricing (Marketing):

This is the buying and selling of farm produce through the registration of prices that are paid by buyers and collected by sellers.

9. Distribution:

Traders, wholesalers and retailers are involved in the distribution of farm produce to their customers.

Types of Markets for Agricultural Produce:

1. Perfect Competition Market:

A perfectly competitive market is a market that consists of many buyers and sellers. It is a type of market in which all available goods and services are identical, there are no restrictions on who can enter the market, and there are a substantial number of buyers and sellers, none of whom can influence the market price.

For example, markets for agricultural products like rice, wheat etc. resemble perfectly competitive markets because there are a large number of producers and products are identical.

2. Imperfect Competition:

Imperfect competition is a competitive market with many sellers offering different products to various customers. The decision of one or more sellers or buyers affects the price of the commodity. The forms of the imperfect market are:

• Monopoly: When there is one seller and more buyers.
• Duopoly: When there are two sellers.
• Oligopoly: Where there is a small number of sellers.
• Monopsony: When there is only one buyer.
• Duopsony: When there are two buyers.
• Oligopsony: A market for a product or service which is dominated by a few large buyers.