Institutional Support for Farmers of Developing Countries: Suggested Forms and Plan of Action

Beside financial problems, farmers of developing countries commonly suffer poor technical extension and lack of perfect marketing information. Performance of supporting governmental institutions is weakened by bureaucracy and impotent organizational practices on one hand, and on the other, low profit expectations hinder participation of the private sector. In view of these respects, the study suggests a certain channel and basis of performance to provide farmers with required both production and marketing technical support and information, principally supervised by a governmental single corps, the ministry of agriculture or a relevant institution, which would be able to retrieve a substantial proportion of expenses through sharing with farmers a percent of the excess revenue over conventional pre-extension levels. The study showed that promoting extension in production and marketing in Egypt could raise farmers' revenues by a range of 22-30%, especially for highly perishable agricultural products, such as vegetables, fruits, poultry and dairy products. A master agricultural authority or organization, most likely governmental, would act as liaison between small producers and all institutions providing production and marketing services; technical support, marketing information and financial aid. Resulted production improvement, and hence farm income increase, is shared between the go-between organization and the producers. All expenses are covered as such, beside encouraging strategic crops production, as well as carrying out plans for infrastructure development.