Urban food supply and distribution require the efficient functioning of a complex set of interrelated services. The ways to improve such services are covered in much of the technical literature which the FAO programme “Approvisionnement et distribution alimentaires des villes” has developed. It is, however important to stress that the impact of improved provision of infrastructure, transport, handling facilities and marketing management, as well as the necessary planning to put these in place, will be minimised if improved facilities are used to convey the wrong foods from farm to the consumer.
Given information about consumers’ food needs farmers will, where possible, make both short and long-term adjustments to their production, harvest and marketing practices in order to adjust to these needs and hence make their farming activities more profitable. A corollary of this is that consumer prices can be also expected to fall, the apparent contradiction between profitability and lower prices being explained by the facts that (1) wasted production due to excess supply will be avoided and (2) farmers confident of their markets will be able to make necessary investments to increase the efficiency of their production.
To achieve the above requires the availability of information on prices, both in the short term to facilitate harvesting and marketing decisions and in the long run to facilitate planning by farmers. Given the small scale of the great mass of farmers supplying food to the urban areas of Africa, it is unreasonable to expect that farmers could may for market information, even if a mechanism could be delivered which allowed them to pay while, at the same time, receiving information on a timely basis. This implies the need for government-run or sponsored Market Information Services. This paper evaluates the operation of such services, with particular reference to Africa, and considers ways in which problems faced in the past could be overcome in the future.
