The Feasibility of Small-scale Indigenous Fruit Processing Enterprises in Southern Africa - Indigenous Fruit Trees in the Tropics: Domestication, Utilization and Commercialization - page 276

1. Support communities through clear land tenure and policy support: where
local groups are well organized and can control forest access, rural enterprises
tend to fare better. A clear sense of group identity, cooperative behaviour and
established rights to the resource can all help.
2. Start with local markets: local markets are easier to enter and monitor than
foreign markets, which often require heavy capital investment and large product
volume and which tend to be vulnerable to product substitution. Enterprises
may diversify to larger markets if such diversification is feasible in terms of
sustainable harvests, product quality and investment requirements.
3. Focus on quality products and building management and entrepreneurial
skills: these elements can be supported through coalitions involving local
partners, local and national NGOs and international technical organizations.
4. Support enterprises through policies facilitating credit and trade: coherent
government policies that support community-based forest product enterprises
are needed, including mechanisms to make credit more available to small
enterprises (such as the recognition of stands of commercial tree species as
collateral) and the removal of counterproductive price controls.
5. To inspire policy makers to support rural enterprises with a coherent policy
framework, FAO has proposed better accounting of the economic importance
of community-based forest product enterprises, including a system for grouping
community-based forest product enterprise trade statistics within existing
commodity classification systems (Chandrasekharan, 1995).
6. Make the most of local knowledge and resources: maintaining cultural integrity
remains an under-appreciated element of forest sustainability, particularly in
remote communities and upland areas. Researchers in cultivation, marketing and
processing should consider the best available knowledge from traditional as well as
scientific sources, in order to optimize forest management and the contribution of
community-based forest product enterprises to the lives of rural people.
15.2.1 Market and economic environment
Assessment of the market and the economic environment is an investigation
into the supply of raw materials, market potential of products, competition,
constraints to business entry and, margins and profitability (Lecup and
Nicholson, 2000). Market and economic assessment is important to identify
opportunities, strengths and constraints in the market channels and to gather
information about the business environment. These opportunities, strengths
and constraints need to be identified before a new marketing system can be
devised or the current marketing system can be improved. Through this
exercise, obstacles to the marketing of products can be identified. The goal is to
gather information from key players involved in the marketing of the product.
According to the opportunities identified, studies of the other areas of
enterprise development are then undertaken.