Creating Opportunities for Domesticating and Commercializing Miombo Indigenous Fruit Trees in Southern Africa - Indigenous Fruit Trees in the Tropics: Domestication, Utilization and Commercialization - page 164

8.4.4 Towards improved market institutions and enterprise development

There is lack of coordination along the supply chain; in particular, quality
control is absent. Some of the constraints on indigenous fruit marketing can be
overcome through combined cultivation and community partnerships along
the supply chain. To improve the marketing systems of indigenous fruits, the
following comments and recommendations have been made regarding the
future development of indigenous fruit market strategies (Ramadhani, 2002;
Mithöfer, 2005; Akinnifesi et al ., 2006):

● There is a need to understand consumer behaviour in present and future

markets.

● Target the product offer to alternative higher-income markets.

● Collaborate with retailers in high-income markets to find acceptable and

appropriate marketing strategies.

● Traders may reorganize themselves into cooperatives to coordinate fruit

flow to different markets, improve services and add value before sale, in
the form of, for example, storage, sorting, grading, packaging and other
practices that make fruits more attractive to buyers; this will in turn increase
the returns.

● Formulate suitable product promotion strategies when introducing

products into new markets or when revising the product offer in present
markets.

● Formulate logistical arrangements to improve chain efficiency.

● Conduct more detailed studies on indigenous crops to ascertain the nature

of demand, consumer characteristics, preferences and product attributes.

● Explore options for greater value addition in existing and new markets.

This is already in progress but more collaboration with industry could
provide valuable further impetus.

● Establish appropriate marketing- and producer-related institutions in order

to entrench more efficient production, communication, logistics and tech-
nology transfer and market relations. This further entails the development of
a credible marketing system.

● A key challenge in marketing and producing less known commodities is

communication and information exchange with markets. Systems and
strategies must be formulated to improve information flows across all
interfaces.

● Each product or group of associated products requires a formulated

marketing strategy.

● Opportunities for farming with selected suitable commodities must be

assessed to enable standardization and consistency in the supply chain and
improve marketing transparency.