Trade and Marketing of Agricultural Products

Abstract

The liberalisation of trade and prices was, in addition to stimulating production, also intended to provide incentives to expand the marketing of local goods, and to make the import and export of goods much simpler. Apart from these measures, however, not much was done to help foster better commercialisation of agricultural products or of agricultural inputs in Guinea. This improvement of trade and marketing was expected to take care of itself, given the new macroeconomic and institutional environment. This was not always the case because like agricultural production itself, trade and marketing activities encountered numerous constraints. This chapter focuses on the factors involved in increasing the amount of agricultural products sold commercially. The production and marketing of Guinea’s agricultural goods are very closely linked, but they are not always carried out by the same people. The degree of official commercialisation of agricultural products depended on numerous inter-related factors, many of which also affected agricultural decision making, but at a different stage in the supply chain. The first section of the chapter discusses the profitability of agricultural trade, which affected its initial attractiveness as an economic activity.