Improving Agricultural Market Performance:
Creation and Development of Market Institutions
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 Coordination of the National Agricultural Research System, which comprises Embrapa,
state agricultural research organizations, universities, national and state research
institutes, and other public and private organizations directly or indirectly linked to
agricultural research activities;
 Research and consulting/extension work on a wide range of themes that include:
o Low-carbon agriculture
o Biological Control
o Coping with droughts
o Integrated Crop Livestock Forestry Systems - ICLFS
o Mechanization and precision agriculture
o Food waste and food loss
o Fisheries and aquaculture
o Basic rural sanitation
o Environmental Services
o Food security, nutrition and health
o Agro-ecological zoning
2.5.5 Lessons Learned
From these, and many other examples of successful and unsuccessful agricultural market
institutions we can conclude:
1. Effective agricultural market institutions require active participation of farmers. Top-
down approaches rarely work as effectively as those based on farmers’ understanding
of their own requirements, as the example of the Indonesian community development
centers in the cocoa subsector illustrates;
2. Public-private coordination tends to produce better outcomes than either public or
private institutions alone. A joint public-private approach tends to ensure that
business activity serves national development objectives and benefits producers, while
also ensuring that market interventions make economic and business sense;
3. There is no evidence that sector-specific institutions are more or less effective than
those that deal with all or most of the agriculture market system. There are advantages
and disadvantages to both. There is, however, strong evidence that coordination
among institutions is essential, whether or not they are formally attached to one
another.
4. Institutions must be accountable and transparent. The example of CAISTAB in Côte
d’Ivoire illuminates the risk of a lack of accountability and transparency.
5. Incentives for public and private institutions alike must be aligned with national
development objectives. The example of the Gambia Produce Marketing Board
illustrates the adverse effect of poorly designed incentives, as does that of the CCC in
Cote d’Ivoire.
6. Institutions should not act as both regulator and market participant. CCC in Cote
d’Ivoire is a cautionary example of an institution that took unacceptable risks to cover