While farmers sell their crops, middlemen provide a linkage between them, markets and buyers. Middlemen have good knowledge of working conditions of markets and have access to agricultural market information. Due to poor access to markets and agricultural market information by smallholders, there is a feeling that middlemen benefit more while farmers sell their crops. Good access to markets and market information may help farmers bypass middlemen while selling crops and thus benefit more. Thus, it is best to improve the informational capabilities (ICs) of farmers in agricultural marketing. Thus, this research measured ICs of farmers accessing market information, through a program NINAYO, while selling their crops. The research utilized the informational, psychological, social, and economic dimensions of the empowerment framework in identifying capability indicators to formulate survey questions. Data were collected from smallholders in six regions in Tanzania. The analysis utilized measures of life satisfaction and results showed that about half of the variation in the dependent variable, satisfaction with capabilities, was explained by the model. Backward elimination analysis confirmed that life satisfaction is multidimensional. Robustness test confirmed a positive relationship between satisfaction and capabilities. Overall, results confirmed ICs are multidimensions, their improvement empowers farmers in agricultural marketing.
Making markets work for the poor in rural communities involves different stakeholders. Management, development partners, private sector and NGOs are accustomed to ensure enabling infrastructure is provided. Access to markets requires good transport and low transaction cost accompanied with recent market information. To provide market information to rural community, stakeholders may initiate the program by providing funds and finding the means of ensuring the sustainability of the program. Delivering market information requires established ICT infrastructure and capable staffing. Thus, a framework to access agricultural market information requires management to provide infrastructure and funding, and also to ensure rural areas are equipped with the technology.
Access to agricultural markets and marketing information are essential factors in promoting competitive markets and improving agricultural sector development. The agricultural sector employs majorities in developing countries and contributes greatly to its development. Unluckily, majorities of the farmers are smallholders living in rural areas and thus, lack appropriate access to markets for their products and also, they are deprived of agricultural market information. As results, farmers are exploited by middlemen who offer low prices for their agricultural produce. This study presents the best way for the agricultural stakeholders to obtain easily agricultural market information service. This study presents a novel agricultural market information system which was implemented using some concepts of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing allows sellers to broadcast whatever produce they want to sell and customers are allowed to submit their requests using either SMS or web.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.