Strategies for Crop Farmers to Access Formal Markets

Farmers, especially small-scale farmers, often highlight the major challenge of having access to formal markets for their produce, especially horticultural commodities.

This hinders them from expanding and sustaining their production.

Accessing markets is a key milestone that can enable a farmer to sustain production in a profitable manner. However, there are several shortfalls many small-scale farmers need to address to access formal markets or sustain their operations.

It is essential for farmers to understand and implement a few strategies to secure formal market off-take agreements, which entail producing for a certain market on a contractual basis.

Firstly, the most important step is for farmers to measure their production area. For instance, if a farmer has an area with a length of 50m and a width of 30m, multiplying the two parameters would give a production area of 1 500 square metres that is available for a farmer to produce any crop of choice.