Rural-urban Marketing Linkages

Book excerpt: By 2030, 60 percent of the world's population are expected to be living in urban areas. Population growth is not solely in larger metropolitan centres - the mega cities. The numbers of small and intermediate-sized urban centres are also increasing and have an important role as links in the marketing system. This guide provides a simplified aid to understanding the physical implications of marketing linkages, based on a regional planning approach. The guide provides a simple planning methodology and framework that focuses on the issue of linking farmers to market outlets for their produce particularly identifying their marketing infrastructure needs. The users of the guide are likely to be at national, provincial or district levels and could include planners and engineers in ministries and departments of public works and transport, planning and marketing officers in ministries and departments of agriculture, local authority officers in planning, commerce and marketing departments and local authorities, communities, farmer groups and voluntary organizations, concerned to understand marketing constraints and with ensuring that rural producers have better access to markets for their products.