Improving Agricultural Market Performance:
Creation and Development of Market Institutions
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have such institutions, but they may not be necessary or especially cost-effective in countries
with small populations, limited financial resources, and/or small agricultural sectors.
Also, as discussed in Chapter 1, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
(CGIAR) and its many subsidiary research organizations, which focus on specific subsectors or
climatic regions (ICRISAT, for example) work actively in many OIC Member Countries, often in
partnership with other local and international organizations. It may be possible for these
institutions to integrate more fully with local institutions in some OIC countries in which such
coordination is relatively weak compared to other countries.
6.3 Recommendations for International Collaborative Efforts
International collaborative efforts are important to address similar challenges faced by OIC
Member Countries. In general, most OIC Member Countries need to create an enabling
environment attractive to agriculture, thereby specifically taking into account the small-scale
and fragmented nature of their agricultural marketing systems and the absence of integration
of small-scale subsistence farmers into agricultural markets. It is especially this enabling role
which market institutions could play. A first step to do would be to create a market institution
responsible for registering farmers as already advocated in the previous Section. This would
be critical in monitoring, measuring, and evaluating the performance of the agricultural market
system through collecting, analyzing, and disseminating market intelligence. This would also
enable to better connect agricultural supply with processing and value-addition activities, and,
eventually, trade and export, as well as introducing and enforcing standards for quality inputs.
More specifically, several bottlenecks common across the three selected case study countries
demonstrate the inability of domestic farmers to get integrated in the agricultural marketing
system. These bottlenecks include:
 Missing coordination between the various market participants of domestic agricultural
market channels (e.g. producers, collectors, distributors, and suppliers);
 Absence of post-harvest management through a lack of collection and storage
infrastructure;
 Ineffective overall management of the agricultural market, which adversely impacts
the quality and perishability of domestic commodities;
 Drive to realize self-sufficiency with respect to basic food products and staple foods;
 Lack of industrial competitiveness, value-addition, and the downstream processing of
agricultural products, which is vital for upgrading the export portfolio of the
agricultural sector;
 Need for diversification of agricultural production to generate more and different
forms of rural employment; and
 Protection of agricultural producers as opposed to only ensuring reasonable and stable
food prices for consumers.