Evaluation of Opportunities and Constraints of Agricultural Marketing Systems: a case Study of Mbezi Louis Village
Community Initiatives for Income Poverty Alleviation (CIPOA) is an organization that develops and promotes economic enterprises, with a vision to have a sustainably high income and improved quality livelihood community by 2015. Its main objective is to create an enabling and conducive environment to fight income poverty in order to improve livelihoods of Mbezi Louis community by the year 2015 through carrymg researches related to community development issues, plan, implement and monitor income generating activities like savings and credit groups famous known as Mshikamano Community Banking and Post Harvest value added products. The projects are carried out by a 100 people group of both gender divided into A, B and C. The paper develops a general framework for the analysis of marketing margins and the food system through extending farming work to consumption level. Observations revealed that in order to facilitate community economic development, research on marketing of processed products and supply chain promotion is important; training on value addition teclmologies enhances the production of horticultural crops and hence increased income, household employment and nutrition security; training farmers on good agricultural practices for improved quality and networking I improves quality, supply and demand as well. Diseases, low crop prices and lack of technology were concluded as major constraints of horticultural crops production in Mbezi Louis village and these affect women more due to their high contribution to farming subsystem. Recommendation is made to build human and non human capacity on appropriate supply chain of horticultural produce.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations