Improving Agricultural Market Performance:

Developing Agricultural Market Information Systems

aims to disseminate timely market information to all stakeholders in agricultural value chains,

enabling farmers, in particular, to optimize planting and marketing decisions. However, the

information generated is also important to the government, enabling it to monitor market

conditions for purposes of formulating sector development policies and food security.

Price data is collected by the field staff of the Ministry of Agriculture through the interview. The

enumerators visit a range of markets for different crops including fresh produce but the focus is

on wholesale market prices in Casablanca, the capital. This is because there is reported a

significant correlation between the Casablanca wholesale price and farmgate prices as well as

retail prices in other markets in the country. The main target audience for the information

disseminated are private market players (farmers, traders and consumers). Information on

daily prices is disseminated via mobile phones and the website of the Ministry (Figure 15).

The infrastructure for the ASAAR system consists of a database for the storage and processing

of collected prices, with data being transmitted automatically and in real time. This is done via a

mobile application embedded on telephones for the collection and transmissio

f data. ASAAR

also has a website which is accessible to the general public and provides daily

ices as well as

access to historical price data and trend reports on different domestic market

Figure 15: Daily Prices for Horticultural Produce in Different Markets in Morocco

Source

14 Source:

http://www.agriculture.gov.ma/