Market Channels
Traditionally various channels are known:
Direct marketing===Transport and trade
- Direct marketing from producer to consumer
- Direct selling to retailers
- Selling at market places
- Selling of the product through traders and middleman
- Selling through cooperatives
- Selling through potato collecting organizations
In traditional systems the trader often played the role of transporter and money lender for the crop inputs in kind and/or in cash.
Potato collecting organizations
In many countries with specialized potato production and specialized markets, potato collecting organizations have developed. These organizations are specialized in: collection, sorting and grading, storage, washing, packing and selling the potatoes to the various markets that asked for potatoes with a specific quality (e.g. retailers of fresh consumption potatoes, processing industry).
Sorting===Washing===Packing===Distribution
The tendency now is, that processors have direct contacts with farmers and that the powerful supermarket chains make contracts with Potato Collecting Organizations.
Contracts
These collecting organizations are either farmers cooperatives or private firms. The collecting organizations mostly have contracts with the producers.
CONTRACT GROWING