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Food-Crop Marketing Boards in Tropical Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

William O. Jones
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Extract

Agricultural marketing boards in tropical Africa are heirlooms of the Great Depression and World War II, when colonial governments found their principal sources of revenue severely reduced and both European and African populations financially distressed. Marketing boards are of British origin, but similar efforts were made in French and Belgian Africa. The rationale for intervention is clouded; some of the principal reasons have faded into the past or were never openly expressed.1

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , September 1987 , pp. 375 - 402
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

Page 375 note 1 For further details, see Jones, W. O., ‘Agricultural Trade Within Tropical Africa: historical background,’ in Bates, R. H. and Lofchie, M. F. (eds.), Agricultural Development in Africa: issues of public policy (New York, 1980), ch. 1.Google Scholar

Page 375 note 2 Hopkins, A. G., An Economic History of West Africa (New York, 1973), p. 199.Google Scholar

Page 376 note 1 According to Goodall, Michael, ‘French Marketing Boards in the Ivory Coast: an historical survey, 1931–1954’, International Seminar on Marketing Boards in Tropical Africa, Leiden, 19–23 September 1983, p. 14, ‘while the notion of price stability was a central element in the creation of the reserve funds, it was not long before they were used for other purposes’.Google Scholar

Page 376 note 2 With changing demographic and political characteristics, the traditional solution whereby the hungry move to food supplies, rather than vice versa, became more and more unsatisfactory, albeit still pursued on occasion.

Page 377 note 1 Cf. Cox, Pamela M. J., ‘Implementing Agricultural Development Policy in Kenya’, in Food Research Institute Studies (Stanford), XIX, 2, 1984, p. 166: ‘there is a flourishing interdistrict trade in maize, which has been important in balancing supply and demand between surplus and deficit areas. Maize movement controls to restrict this trade in an effort to direct surplus production into official channels have had negative effects on rural producers and consumers…introducing instability and widening the difference between producer and consumer prices.’Google Scholar See Child, Brian, Muir, Kay, and Blackie, Malcolm, ‘An Improved Maize Marketing System for African Countries: the case of Zimbabwe,’ in Food Policy (Guildford), 11 1985;Google Scholar and also Temu, P. E., Marketing Board Pricing and Storage Policy with Particular Reference to Maize in Tanzania (New York, 1984).Google Scholar

Page 378 note 1 Johnson, R. W. M., ‘African Agricultural Development in Southern Rhodesia, 1945–1960,’ in Food Research Institute Studies, IV, 2, 1964, pp. 196–7.Google Scholar

Page 378 note 2 L. H. Brown, ‘Agricultural Change in Kenya, 1945–1960’, in ibid. VII, I, 1968, p. 64.

Page 378 note 3 Fuggles-Couchman, N. R., Agricultural Change in Tanganyika, 1945–1960 (Stanford, 1964). Tanzania restored its maize board shortly after independence in 1961.Google Scholar

Page 378 note 4 Bauer, P. T., West African Trade (London, 1954), pp. 263, 267, and 276.Google Scholar

Page 378 note 5 In the Belgian Congo, now Zaīre, the colonial practice was to use regulated monopolies, some of them with co-operative characteristics.

Page 379 note 1 Cf. Jamison, J. A., ‘Marketing Orders and Public Policy for the Fruit and Vegetable Industries,’ in Food Research Institute Studies, X, 3, 1971, pp. 229–392.Google Scholar

Page 379 note 2 For a general critique of the West African marketing boards, see Rimmer, Douglas, The Economies of West Africa (New York, 1984), pp. 164ff.Google Scholar

Page 380 note 1 In the 23 case-studies of individual marketing boards presented at the Leiden seminar, there were few good words for any of them, the most severe criticisms being made about those concerned with food crops. For further details, see the appendix to this article on pp. 396–402, below.

Page 381 note 1 Cf. Cohen, Abner, Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: a study of Hausa migrants in Yoruba towns (Berkeley, 1969);Google ScholarHill, Polly, ‘Landlords and Brokers: a West African trading system,’ in Cahiers d'études africaines (Paris), VI, 1966, pp. 349–66;Google Scholar and Ilori, C. O., ‘Economics of Production and Distribution of Staple Foodstuffs in Western Nigeria’, Ph.D. dissertation, Food Research Institute, Stanford University, 1968.Google Scholar

Page 384 note 1 In Umaihia, Nigeria, in the mid-1970s, foodstuff traders received semi-weekly prices from their partners in the North by courier, and these figures were posted publicly for all to see. Merchants in the big Onitsha market were sent information about prices and supplies in major growing areas by means of ‘waybills’ carried by lorry drivers.

Page 384 note 2 There is a considerable literature about the problems this has created for Kenya's maize boards. See, for a recent example, Cox, loc.cit. pp. 165ff.

Page 385 note 1 For example, see Thodey, A. R., ‘Marketing of Staple Food in Western Nigeria’, Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, California, 1968, a draft 4-vol. report prepared for U.S. A.I.D., and ‘Marketing of Grains and Pulses in Ethiopia’, Stanford Research Institute, April 1969, prepared for the Technical Agency, Imperial Ethiopian Government; B. E. Rourke, ‘Wholesale Prices of Starchy Foods in Major Urban Centres of Ghana’, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Ghana, Legon, July 1969;Google ScholarGilbert, E. H., ‘The Marketing of Staple Foods in Northern Nigeria’, Ph.D. dissertation, Food Research Institute, Stanford University, 1969;Google ScholarJones, W. O., Marketing Staple Food Crops in Tropical Africa (Ithaca, 1972);Google Scholar CILSS/Club de Sahel, , Marketing, Food Policy and Storage of Grains in the Sahel: a survey (Ann Arbor, 1977), Vols. I-II, Center for Research on Economic Development, University of Michigan;Google ScholarHays, H. M. and McCoy, J. H., Food Grain Marketing in Northern Nigeria: spatial and temporal performance’, in Journal of Development Studies (London), 14, 2, 197;Google ScholarSouthworth, V. R., ‘Food Crops Marketing in Atebubu District, Ghana’, Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1981;Google Scholar and Heytens, Paul J., ‘Testing Market Integration,’ in Food Research Institute Studies, XX, 1, 1986.Google Scholar

Page 385 note 2 Southworth, op.cit. provides a neat illustration from his study of maize farmers in central Ghana.

Page 386 note 1 Jones, Marketing Staple Food Crops in Tropical Africa, and Southworth, op.cit.

Page 386 note 2 Gilbert, op.cit.

Page 386 note 3 Cf. Kenya, , Maize Commission of Inquiry. Report (Nairobi, 1966).Google Scholar

Page 386 note 4 Jones, W. O., ‘The Structure of Staple Food Marketing in Nigeria as Revealed by Price Analysis’, in Food Research Institute Studies, VIII, 1968, pp. 95–123; and Southworth, op.cit. In Nigeria, Jones found well-established market networks for cowpeas and gari at r = 0·90, reasonably good networks for millet at 0·70, and poorly defined networks for maize, rice, and yams. In Ghana, Southworth found a well-defined network for maize at 0·90, sparsely-defined networks for rice, yams, and kokonte (dried cassava) at 0·80.Google Scholar In southern Nigeria, Heytens, ibid. found evidence of improving integration of markets between the 1950s and 1960s that may have been a consequence of road-building during that period.

Page 387 note 1 Jones, W. O., ‘Some Economic Dimensions of Agricultural Marketing Research’, in Smith, Carol A. (ed.), Regional Analysis (New York, 1976), Vol. I.Google Scholar

Page 387 note 2 The cost of transport was probably somewhere between these two figures.Google Scholar

Page 388 note 1 A widely-held belief was that marketing costs would decline if there were fewer traders in the market: Martin, Anne, The Marketing of Minor Crops in Uganda (London, 1963) provides examples,Google Scholar and a classic work by Bauer, P. T. and Yamey, B. S., ‘Competition and Prices: a study of groundnut buying in Nigeria’, in Economica (London), XIX, 1952, pp. 31–43, illustrates the fallacy of this proposition. The economic innocence and uneconomic behaviour of African countrymen were widely accepted by Americans and Europeans over 20 years ago –seeGoogle ScholarJones, W. O., ‘Economic Man in Africa’, in Food Research Institute Studies, I, 2, 1960, pp. 107–34.Google Scholar

Page 388 note 2 In discussing export-marketing boards, Rimmer, op.cit. p. 262, says: ‘By the early 1980s, there was scarcely a West African head of state who did not denounce parastatal bodies as inefficient, wasteful, corrupt and irresponsible. Yet the inference was never drawn that the public corporation was an inappropriate institution in many commercialized activities in West Africa.’

Page 389 note 1 There was a time when economic authoritarianism, supported by a spoils system, might have been justified as necessary for national survival – cf. Jones, W. O., ‘Independence and Economic Progress in Tropical Africa’, in ‘Africa in Transition. The Kennecott Lecture Series’, University of Arizona Bulletin (Tucson), XXXII, 5, 11 1961. There is strong reason to hope that this phase has passed in most of tropical Africa, but perhaps not.Google Scholar

Page 390 note 1 According to Rimmer, op.cit. p. 262: ‘Every government is trapped by earlier decisions on where and how and on what to spend’.

Page 391 note 1 The National Agricultural Marketing Board in Zambia, for example, fearing a maize shortage in 1971, imported 250,000 tons, but a sample census of agriculture taken in that year (the first ever to include ‘traditional’ as well as ‘commercial’ farmers) estimated total domestic supplies to be more than twice national requirements for human consumption. Much of the maize imported in 1971 was still in store by 1975. See Jones, W. O., ‘Agricultural Markets and Prices’, in World Bank, Republic of Zambia. Agricultural Sector Survey (Washington, D.C., 1975), Vol. II, Annex 8.Google Scholar

Page 392 note 1 Jones, W. O., ‘Economic Tasks for Food Marketing Boards in Tropical Africa’, in Food Research Institute Studies, XIX, 2, 1984, pp. 113–38.Google Scholar

Page 392 note 2 A detailed list of facilities proposed in 1978 for a rural bulking market in Ghana included the following: a vehicle-service station supplying fuel, spare parts, and repairs; a public warehouse open to farmers and traders for stocks that could be pledged as collateral; a lorry park with loading bays and handling equipment; a post office, telephone, and telegraph; packaging materials; a canteen where traders and drivers could meet and conduct business; over-night accommodation; road information, and market broadcasts about prices and supplies; and banking facilities. Pearson, Scott R., Jones, W. O., and Southworth, V. R., ‘Food Crop Marketing in Atebubu District’, report prepared for U.S. A.I.D./Ghana, January 1978, p. 56.Google Scholar

Page 394 note 1 Errors of estimates of maize supplies in Eastern Africa are notorious. There is reason to believe that export marketing boards may not do much better.

Page 394 note 2 An extreme version of the prejudice against merchants was adduced at the Leiden seminar by Filippi, L. A., ‘Commerçants privés et interventions de l'état au commerce des céréales en Haute-Volta’, p. 13, who claimed that the press of Ouagadougou denounced traders in millet as affameurs (or ‘starvers’) of the population of the capital.Google Scholar

Page 394 note 3 Some of the remarkable achievements of the tropical African countries since they achieved independence have been in the increased provision of all kinds and levels of education, including literacy programmes for adults.

Page 395 note 1a It is often the farmers who extend credit to export-marketing boards through delayed payment.

Page 395 note 1b Perhaps not everywhere. There are repeated stories of buyers for boards who fail to have sufficient cash on market day.