Food must be acceptable, affordable, and available to consumers and consumers must have the resources, knowledge, and correct mindset to purchase and consume these foods. The narrative of this study centered on moving biofortified food closer to market by looking at awareness, adoption, and consumer mindsets as pillars to achieve market access. Our findings show that in Abia state, Nigeria, consumers are aware of biofortified cassava. This signifies a high market potential and economic opportunity for stakeholders in the supply chain. Unfortunately, consumers lack understanding of biofortified cassava's nutrition value. The high adoption level of biofortified cassava has implications on investment and stimulation of the local economy. The study identified accessibility, purposefulness and innovation as vital mindset drivers to scale market demand, and factors that affect both consumption, production, and marketing of the product. This study provides insight regarding potential priority areas of action for government policy interventions to stimulate demand and supply opportunities. This study also provides evidence that scaling up demand will depend on awareness creation. There is a need to improve communication networks to provide overwhelming product acceptance, adoption, and consumption of biofortified cassava. This will help change remaining myths about agro-biotechnology and the bioeconomy.
The study was on the socioeconomic analysis of wholesale rice marketers in Abia State, Nigeria. The study described the socioeconomic characteristics of the traders, determined the socioeconomic factors that influenced profitability, ascertained the marketing margins, percentage sales receipts as well as the percentage total variable cost (structural efficiency) of the enterprise and made some policy recommendations based on the findings. A multi-stage sampling technique was used and administered strictly on the wholesalers who deal on local rice. Five markets were selected from each of the local government areas. After this, twenty traders were randomly selected from the already selected markets. In all, a total of 100 respondents were selected for the study. Descriptive statistics, multiple regression, marketing margin, percentage sales receipt as well as structural efficiency formulae were used in the analysis of the data. The result showed that majority of traders accounting for 54 percent had secondary school certificate. The result also showed that 74 percent of them had spent between 6 and 10 years in the business. Income, years of experience, educational attainment of the traders and sex of the traders were major determinants of profitability in the enterprise. Percentage sales receipts obtained were 11.43 percent while 1.33 percent was obtained as percentage total variable cost, indicating that the enterprise is structurally efficient. The study recommended that agencies involved in the building of roads should extend such to these localities where rice is produced. Also females should be empowered economically to go into the trade, given their profit levels in the enterprise.
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