Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
rather than fruits increases the risk of damaging the fruits and incurs high
losses. Such conditions require specialized traders who can deal efficiently with
the transport of fruits. Undoubtedly, the need to use intermediate dealers
significantly increases marketing costs and lowers price efficiency.
During the 1999/2000 indigenous fruit ripening season, a detailed
marketing research study was conducted in Zimbabwe to generate baseline
information on the prevailing marketing system for Uapaca kirkiana and
Strychnos cocculoides , including consumer preferences and willingness to pay
for the fruits. The study also explored the possibility of expanding marketing
opportunities for these fruits. This chapter discusses the interesting findings of
this study. It describes the marketing chain, characterization of the price
formation system, price inefficiencies, lack of marketing transparency and the
resulting imperfections in the system.
12.2 Marketing of Indigenous Fruits during the 1999/2000
Ripening Season in Zimbabwe
12.2.1 Production and the marketing chain
During the 1999/2000 ripening season for indigenous fruits there was almost no
on-farm production of indigenous fruits. Producers/collectors, retailers and vendors
collected the fruits for selling from communal forests and very few collected from
naturally grown trees in their own fields. However, collection was limited by the
lack of transparency from the government about property rights regarding
the ownership and use of indigenous fruits (see Section 12.3). Furthermore, the
marketing system was not characterized by a clear division of marketing activities
between the actors involved. Sometimes fruit producers/collectors (those collecting
the fruits for sale), as well as fruit retailers and vendors (who buy fruits from
wholesalers and sell to consumers), were involved in gathering the fruits from
communal forests, taking them to the markets and selling them.
However, the findings reported in this study are based on producers/
collectors who collected the fruits from communal forests and sold them to
wholesalers from their homes or transported them to the urban markets. In
most cases wholesalers bought the fruits from producers/collectors' homes and
transported them to urban markets and sold them to retailers, vendors, and
sometimes to consumers. Retailers were defined as formal traders with
permanent cubicles at the central or growth point/district markets, for which
they paid a monthly fee. Vendors were informal traders who sold their fruits
along the highways, at roadsides, along the streets and on the market
peripheries, where they did not pay taxes.
12.2.2 Product differentiation
Among the characteristics of U. kirkiana and S. cocculoides fruit marketing was
lack of product differentiation at the production/collection and wholesale levels.
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