Linking Farmers to Markets for High-Value Agricultural Commodities

Pratap Birthal, Awadhesh K. Jha and Harvinder Singh

Agricultural Economics Research Review, 2007, vol. 20, issue Conference

Abstract: Growing demand for high-value food commodities is opening up opportunities for farmers, especially smallholders to diversify towards commodities that have strong potential for higher returns to land, labour and capital. But, there is an apprehension about the capability of smallholders to participate in the market-oriented production due to their lack of access to markets, capital, inputs, and technology and extension services. In this paper, possibilities have been explored of linking smallholders to markets through such institutions as cooperatives, growers’ associations and contract farming that reduce marketing and transaction costs and alleviate some production constraints. Evidence has shown that smallholders do participate and make a sizeable contribution to the production of high-value food commodities, but their links to markets are not strong. Though market institutions like cooperatives, contract farming and growers’ associations do not altogether ignore smallholders, some policy support is imperative to strengthen their linkages with the markets.

Keywords: Agribusiness; Marketing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/47437/files/2-PS-Birthal.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aerrae:47437

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.47437

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Agricultural Economics Research Review from Agricultural Economics Research Association (India) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().