FOOD CROP MARKETING in ATEBUBU DISTRICT, Ghanat
v. Roy SOUTHWORTH, WILLIAM O. JONES, AND SCOTT R. PEARSON* FOOD CROP MARKETING IN ATEBUBU DISTRICT, GHANAt The traditional system of marketing food crops in Ghana, as in, much of tropical Mrica, has recently been under considerable stress. Much maligned, this marketing system has variously been charged with being ineffi cient, disorganized, unresponsive, and oligopsonistic. At the same time, private wholesale traders have been vilified in the press, often being accused of hoarding and of cheating innocent farmers or powerless consumers. J In response to this perceived state of affairs, many governments, including Ghana's, have estab lished parastatal corporations to market ftlodcrops, sometimes (though not in Ghana) possessing a legal monopoly of this trade . .. Young Professional, the World Bank, Professor Emeritus and Associate Director, Food Research Institute, respectively. t Field research was carried out under auspices of the United States Agency for International Development, contracts AID/afr-C-1283, 1284, and 1285 and 641-78-08, 09. The authors acknowledge the assistance of Michael Fuchs-Carsch, Agency for International Development, Accra; !Martin Homiah, Atebubu District Chief Executive Officer until August 1977; Joseph Quansah, Principal of Atebubu Training College; Henry A. K. Sam, Manager of the Agricultural Development Bank's branch at Atebubu; V. K. Nyanteng, Institute of Statistical, Social, and Economic Research, University of Ghana; Kwame Prakah-Asante, Bureau of Integrated Rural Development, University of Science and Technology; and various members of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Bank of Ghana. They were fortunate, too, in being able to draw on the expert knowledge of Polly Hill Humphreys of Cambridge UniverSIty, Blair E.
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