Fresh produce marketing

Marketing of the final product is a complex dynamic as it evolves over time. Not all buyers will stay in business and most of them will change their buying patterns to suit their own market needs. So many growers have told me that growing is easy, it is the marketing that is so difficult. If you do not have an offset for your crop, well, then producing it does not help.  You have to have a good marketing strategy and plan in place to ensure that you can sell 100 % of your produce. Vegetables and herbs fall under the un-regulated sector of Agriculture. There is not marketing control like there use to be when various agricultural boards were in place to protect the farmers.  These days the markets are open for all. No protection.

Growing vegetables is not an end goal.  The grower must be able to sell his product at a price that would give him the most profit.   The marketing strategy should be determined long before the soil is prepared.

The marketing of vegetables include all farm activities involved in moving the final product at a given time, place and form in which the consumer is willing to pay a price.  Marketing functions includes buying, selling, transportation, storage, grading, price determination, financing and the assumptions of risk.

• The marketing of vegetables are influenced by:
• Perishability
• Seasonality
• Bulk
• Alternative product forms and markets
• Price and quantity

The marketing of vegetables is made difficult by their perishability. The whole process of transporting the produce from the farm to the selling point is critical in determining the quality of the end product the consumer or buyer sees and the price obtained for the product.

Quite  often growers are not limited by the climate to grow certain products but by the location of the market for the product.  The transportation cost can quite be so high that it is not feasible to sell at a certain  market.

In the following sections of this site we will be discussing:

• The Marketing system
• Components of the horticultural industry (such as the processing-, fresh market-, greenhouse- and some specialty crop marketing).