A Fundamental Review of Agricultural Marketing

What is the role, function, and intent of agricultural marketing? Most farmers would be ill-prepared to answer this question. They remain in awe of the entire process and express confusion, or even contempt, when the topic of marketing emerges. Earlier in our history, the role of marketing focused on the act of market clearing, the function revolved around the physical transfer of the product, and the intent was one of value trading between producer and consumer. Within this simple context, the farmer viewed marketing as the sale of his cattle at an auction or the delivery of his produce to a buyer. Over time, the marketing system grew more complex as market intermediaries expanded their roles or as consumers demanded that more value-added services be added to food products. An even more complex component was added as various public institutions (marketing boards, government agencies, commodity commissions) intervened in the food chain between the farmer-producer and the consumer. Little wonder, therefore, that many American farmers now view the agricultural marketing system as a vast wasteland of conflicting interests. Even worse, this institutional intervention in the food chain was, by intent, designed to insulate agricultural producers from the impacts of free market forces. Insofar as government subsidies now comprise a significant part of farmers' incomes, farmers have gradually been lulled into a state of complacency regarding the all-important role of converting raw agricultural products into consumer products. Also, some farmers now view marketing as someone else's affair, while their responsibility ends with the primary production of a high-quality meat, grain, dairy, poultry, or horticultural product. In brief, as marketing forces have grown more important and complex, agricultural producers have developed an ever-more myopic view of the process. As noted earlier, institutional intervention is much to blame for this outcome. Yet in the absence of this public intervention and its subsidies, it can be argued that our agricultural economy would, today, be in a very chaotic state. The question that obviously arises is whether or not public intervention, of the magnitude currently sustained, will continue to impact the future of our agricultural markets. I'm convinced the answer is "no" and that as such intervention is slowly removed, farmers will return to a period of direct confrontation with the realities and importance of marketing. This gradual disappearance of market intervention is predicted for the following reasons: