Market Structure for Agricultural Development

T HE invitation for this paper specified that it would be desirable to give special emphasis to steps which should be taken to develop up-to-date marketing systems within countries which had to start from a primitive, almost wholly local, market structure.This means that I must resort to a primarily a priori approach.My own experience is limited wholly to the United States of America, supplemented only by some acquaintance with the difficulties which the Food and Agriculture Organization has had in developing technical assistance work in the marketing field.You may argue that this lack of personal experience in improving marketing systems could or should have been offset by more extensive reading on my part.Perhaps so; but I am not aware of any large body of especially helpful literature dealing with the subject.Fortunately, however, I understand that a paper for the Conference is merely the starting-point for a discussion so that there is always the pleasing possibility, especially for the discussants, that the more mistakes and difficulties I run into, the more rough edges there will be to challenge the abilities of and evoke comment from the rest of the group.This, then, brings me to the disadvantages under which not only I, but perhaps all of us, labour with respect to this particular subject.These include : 1. Agricultural marketing is a broad field.In the United States we use the term to cover all the events which take place in moving products from the initial producer to the final consumer, embracing the activities of all the firms and institutions which make the necessary decisions and carry out the actual economic and physical operations involved.All too often our discussions centre on some portion of this total process or structure rather than on the whole.2. The general theory of economic development is still relatively new and some of those who talk most about it seem to feel that there are only slight or secondary connexions between agriculture and 1