THE call by the Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU) in Southern and Western Provinces for farmers in the country to form groups to collectively market their products should be taken seriously.
The timely call by ZNFU region ‘A’ female farmers’ representative, Jenifer Handoondo, is ultimately aimed at coming up with ways of mitigating the cost of transport and other expenses.
To enjoy the full benefits of the economies of scale, the farmers or indeed any other small scale business entities in the country should work together by forming groupings.
This will augment the benefits of their joint efforts and make their products more competitive on both local and external markets because they will be produced at relatively low costs.
Therefore, factors like the high cost of production in the sector also make forming groups by farmers a sensible economic move as a way of reducing the cost of production per given quantity of products.
It is important for farmers to consider coming together in groups for easy marketing of their produce, unlike working in isolation, meeting duplicated costs single-handedly.
Given the competitive nature of the farming business, marketing of agricultural products could be enhanced if farmers worked together and presented a joint front.
It will be easier to penetrate any market if the farmers sold their products in groups while for the long-period orders, it will be easier to sustain the supply if all farmers work jointly to meet such orders.
Truly, the move would enable the farmers to be able to easily meet big orders from the chain stores and other big buyers if they were in groups.
Usually, big buyers, like Shoprite and Pick ‘n Pay, find it difficult to get local contents for their outlets because of the small quantities which are supplied by farmers.
Mostly these chain-stores would want to constantly stock a given produce from farmers throughout their outlets but often the farmers, working in isolation, fail to meet that requirement.
In the end these investors are perceived to be shunning the local products.
While most of the farmers exist as small individuals, most of their counterparts, the buyers of their goods – on the other hand – could be multinational firms with huge bargaining powers.
Therefore, grouping farmers together could also give them a larger bargaining voice so that they are able to get better deals from these buyers.
Generally, the formation of farmers’ groups will facilitate easy communication between farmers and other stakeholders, be they suppliers of inputs, buyers of farm produce or even financiers!
In the case of external help, it will – for instance – be easier to provide knowledge and technical transfer to farmers in groupings than it will be to individuals.
The Government and other organisations who would want to impart such knowledge into the farmers would easily do so to a group than to individuals.
In the same vein, the offering of extension services and other facilities like dip tanks will be more conveniently done to united farmers than to fragmented ones.
Additionally, it will be easier for a group of farmers, say a cooperative club, to approach potential lenders like commercial banks for credit facilities given the group guarantee.
In the end all farmers in the groupings will viably carry out their individual farming and benefit much more than those who will elect to remain alone.