If you’re thinking about producing agricultural goods, first you have to learn the characteristics of agricultural products and production.
Before producing any product, you have to identify some important questions. These are –
- What do your consumers want?
- Where you will sell these products?
- How you will sell it?
- What are the values of your product?
- Which way you should add value to your product?
- What will be your pricing strategy?
- What will be your marketing functions?
This is also called market your products before producing this. It is very important to find out these questions in the present business environment. But, maximum farmers neglect to do this or they don’t have enough knowledge. If you find out the answer to all these questions, you may be a successful marketer.
In the past, we can see that farmers are independent decision-makers in the food market. They should produce whatever their motherland permits them to produce. As we know that agricultural product depends on nature.
Today, we can see that farmers’ production decisions are shaped by major marketing firms and consumer preferences. The marketing firms are so much concerned about the market demands. More than ever, farmers also understand the concept of marketing and they honor the doctrine of consumer sovereignty. For this reason, Food producers are concerned about the market systems and food consumers’ desires.
Now, I’m going to describe the characteristics of farming and agricultural products which make the marketing of food different from other products.
Characteristics of agricultural products:
At first, you have to learn what your product is. After that, you should go for production. In producing an agricultural product, you have to learn the characteristics of your product first. Have a look –
- A raw material: Agricultural products are considered raw materials. Because it is used for further processing. After reproducing this, agricultural products turn into food products. Our farmers are sold only farm products like wheat, potato, chicken, etc. The food marketing firms collect this from the farmer. They reproduce this like – wheat turns into bread, biscuits, and cake; potato turns into chips; chicken turns into fried chicken, chilly chicken, and grilled chicken.
- Bulky and perishable goods: Agricultural products are much more perishable than any other goods. These products also produce bulkier. Because single product can’t possible to produce. Bulky production reduces the cost of producing these goods. But it affects the physical handling of agricultural goods.
Perishability also affects the marketing of farm and food products. These products need immediate consumption otherwise they lose their value. Bulkiness and perishability affect the market of farm products. Besides, bulkiness requires large storage capacities and perishable goods need immediate consumption. Special refrigerators can help me with these perishable goods. Even, maintaining the quality of these goods is a costly problem. - Quality variation: The quality of agricultural goods varies from year to year as well as season to season. As previously noted that our agriculture production depends on the motherland and nature. During the first year, you can get a better quality of crops. But in the second year, you may face lower quality. Besides, there exist some natural calamities like – floods, drought, excessive rain, etc. that can affect farm production. Based on the quality, farmers set different prices for their products.
- Identical product: The farmers all over the country aren’t connected to each other. That’s why all farmers produce identical products. Sometimes, we face surplus and shortage of agricultural goods. This happens because of the identical product produced by all farmers.
Characteristics of agricultural production:
After knowing the characteristics of the agricultural products, you should go for production. Otherwise, you may be the loser.
- Total output: The total output is increased in the agricultural products day by day. Because the identical product is produced by all farmers all over the country. Nature is a big fact. It affects the production of agricultural goods. The shortage of goods and surplus of goods are occurred because of the natural environment.
- Annual variability in production: We face annual variability in agricultural production. This happens because the farmers all over the country are scattered, no interconnection with other farmers, no control over production, weather and disease, unstable prices, government programs, lack of technological development, and so on.
- Seasonable variability in production: Much of our agricultural goods are produced based on the season. The different season gives different types of vegetables, crops, grains, and fruits. We have a small portion of goods are produced all over the year. But we have to depend on nature.
- The geographic concentration of production: Although, we face production variability in the total production, annual variability, and seasonal variability, besides we have geographical variability. For example, we depend on California because it can produce the best fruits and vegetables. Texas and Florida specialize in the Great Plains, and the southeast specializes in eggs and poultry.
- Varying cost of production: There are two players who produce agricultural goods.
- Giant agribusiness: The giant farm has modern facilities so that it can minimize its production cost. They can directly reach the final consumers. That brings a high margin for them. Because there is no middleman.
- Individual small farmers: The individual small farmer can’t reduce their production costs alone. Because they may produce a small portion of goods and sell them in the middleman. So, they get a small profit.
Mentioning the above characteristics are found in agricultural products and production. Hopefully, you got all these points very clearly. Now, you should go for agricultural production.
