Improving Food Marketing Systems in Developing Countries: The Experience from Latin America

Abstract

This book wraps up a decade of team experience of local professionals with MSU staff and students in the adaptation of technology to foodsheds in Puerto Rico, Northeast Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, and Costa Rica. The book is an important element in the tool kit of development specialists faced with practical challenges of identifying opportunities for improving agricultural production and distribution systems in developing countries, designing strategies and devising systematic coordinating mechanisms for implementation of projects consistent with national goals and priorities, and marketing the reforms to the concerned publics. Based on the belief that a question well asked is half the answer, the authors summarize seven common system development problems that keep rural costs high and make coordination difficult: