| There are some apparently successful cases of collective marketing with staple food commodities (grains and root crops), but these are less common than cases involving higher value agricultural products. These can be attributed to the benefit/cost ratio to participants being generally higher for collective marketing of the higher-value crops. Some of the costs are ‘hidden’, in the sense that they are borne by individuals in time spent in attending meetings, and not shown in the financial statements of the enterprises concerned. Examining a series of cases, the paper advocates an approach to the marketing of staples which involves analyzing the value chain and identifying those activities which on the one hand, best lend themselves to individual initiative,... |
