An Assessment of Factors Influencing the Market Performance of Coffee Farmers’ Cooperatives in Melka Balo Woreda: The Case of Kurtu Cooperatives Society, Ethiopia
International Journal of Research and Innovation in Applied Science (IJRIAS), 1 (2):
01-08 (May 2016)Abstract
Productivity of smallholder agriculture lingers at
subsistence level, primarily due to the unreliable supply and
unaffordable prices of farm inputs, and poor rural marketing
infrastructure. Cooperatives are indispensable institutions for
addressing such a structural problem. In Ethiopia, inefficiencies
in the coffee markets primarily hurts the income of coffee
farmers and discourages their production and marketing of
coffee, and secondly it also significantly decreases the country’s
foreign exchange that should have been obtained from coffee
production and trading. This suggests that it is very crucial to
study and monitor the performance of coffee markets in all
coffee producing areas of the country and improve their
efficiency. The study was initiated with the objectives of
investigate major marketing problems of coffee cooperatives of
farmers, to assess the major constrains that exist in the channel
members and to recommend the better placement of coffee
product as well as the positioning of Kurtu Cooperative Society.
The research design is descriptive in nature and the data for this
study were collected both from primary and secondary sources.
Primary data was collected using two types of questionnaire, one
for the coffee producers (farmers) who are members of the
cooperatives and the other for wholesalers and retailers.
According to the results of the study, sample cooperatives were
characterized by lack of marketing facilities, shortage of land,
poor road infrastructural problems ,prevalence of diseases that
influence farmer’s market performancesand alsotraders business
were lack of road, lack of transportation, and also the constraints
indicated by wholesalers and retailers with respect to coffee
marketing include delay in unloading coffee at ECX which
creates additional cost and the most important marketing
problems reported by the traders include too much competition
with unlicensed traders and the overall storage of coffee supply.