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Main points in Chapter 2
The price paid for farmers' produce
What influences prices under the new system?
Supply, which is influenced by …
Consumer demand, which is influenced by …
Trader demand, which is infuenced by …
- Production levels in other parts of the country. Traders will prefer to buy in easily accessible areas. Demand for maize
in other areas will thus be low until there
is no more left in easy-to-reach areas
- Production levels in neighbouring countries
Traders prefer to go where roads are good…
… and will pay higher prices
A trader will be happier to make a visit
if he can collect sizeable quantities
and doesn't have to visit farmers individually.
Location
Time of the Year
Information
Quality
- Better quality maize at the right moisture
content will get better prices
THE OLD SYSTEM
Under the old system, the price paid by the marketing
board for maize was set by the government. In most
countries this price had two important characteristics: it
was the same throughout the country and it was the
same throughout the year.
Paying the same price throughout the country was
seen as being fair to all. However, the problem with this
policy was that it often encouraged farmers in remote
areas to grow maize when they should have grown other
crops which cost less to transport. Transporting large
quantities of maize over distance was one reason why
marketing boards ran into financial difficulties.
Paying the same price throughout the year meant
that farmers were keen to deliver their maize to the marketing
board as soon as possible. They had no incentive
to store grain until the price went up. Farmers only
invested in stores large enough to hold their families'
own consumption needs over a year or so. They did not
store maize meant to be sold. Now that the system has
changed farmers are in a difficult situation because most
do not have enough adequate storage, particularly for
hybrid maize. As is discussed later in this Guide, hybrid
maize requires a different kind of store because it is best
stored shelled, not on the cob.
THE NEW SYSTEM
Under a liberalized marketing system, the prices which
traders are prepared to pay vary throughout the country.
This reflects the different costs that traders have to meet
in getting the maize from the farmer to the market.
Under the new system, the price will almost certainly
rise over the season. Prices can be expected to be lowest
immediately after harvest and then go up as supplies
become scarcer. Thus, under the new system there is
no such thing as a maize “price.” There are many prices
and these may even vary within the same area, with
some traders offering more than others at any particular
time.
Under the old system governments usually tried to fix
the maize price so that it was greater than the cost of
production. This was in order to give the farmer a reasonable
return for his labour. Under the new system,
however, when there is a large surplus farmers may
sometimes have to sell their maize for less than the cost
of production. This is a problem faced by farmers
throughout the world when prices are decided by market
conditions.
INFLUENCES ON PRICES
There are a number of factors which influence the prices
of products. These include:
- supply and demand;
- location;
- time of the year;
- information.
- quality;
Supply and demand
Prices of most products generally respond to both the
quantity supplied and the quantity demanded of that
product. In theory, when prices go up there will be a fall
in demand and an increase in supply. In time, the
amount supplied at a particular price will come to equal
the amount demanded.
In the case of staple foods such as maize the situation
is not so straightforward. Farmers do not, in the short
term, have much control over how much of a product is
produced. They can, for the following season, reduce
the amount of maize they produce by using less fertilizer,
not planting such a large area, growing other crops,
or do just the opposite by increasing maize output. For
any particular harvest, however, the prices they receive
are very much influenced by the total amount produced
in the country and region which, in turn, is mainly influenced
by the weather.
Quantities of maize supplied by farmers to the market
at a particular time will depend on several factors,
including:
- how much maize they have produced. When the
harvest is good they will clearly have more bags for
sale;
- how much cash they need. Farmers often have to
sell some of their maize immediately after harvest to
pay back loans and raise much-needed cash. How
many bags each farmer sells will depend on the
price and on how much cash he needs;
- how much storage they have. Farmers may be
unhappy with the price offered and want to store
their maize until later in the year, in the hope that the
price may go up. However, they may not have suitable
storage available to them, or storage may be
more expensive than the benefits of storing (see
Chapter 5);
- the price. If the price is high farmers may try to sell
all of their produce as quickly as possible, so
increasing the amount supplied to the market in the
short run. If the price is really high, some may even
make the mistake of selling maize which they should
be keeping for their family's consumption later in the
year;
Demand for maize which farmers have available to sell
will, likewise, depend on a range of factors:
- if the market price is high, consumers will reduce
their purchases of maize meal. This may simply
mean eating less. But it can also mean that consumers
will be more careful about how much they
cook, and eat more or less the same quantity but
waste less. It can also mean eating less maize meal
and eating more of other products, such as bananas,
roots or tubers. Consumers may also respond to
higher prices by eating lower qualities of meal. As it
takes more unmilled maize to produce a bag of
super-sifted meal than it does to produce a bag of
unsifted meal, this will also reduce the quantity of
maize demanded;
- if the market price is low, consumers will increase
their consumption of maize meal (see Figure 2). But
a person can only eat so much meal, so consumers
who can already afford adequate quantities will not
increase their consumption by much. The demand
for staple foods, such as maize, is said by economists
to be relatively price inelastic. That is, demand
does not change very much in response to price
changes;
- demand by traders for maize produced by farmers in
one area will depend on how much farmers in other
areas have to sell. For example, if the harvest in the
south of Malawi is excellent, traders will be able to
buy most of the maize they need to supply Lilongwe
and Blantyre in the south, and will be less likely to
visit the north of the country to buy maize;
- similarly, demand will depend on production levels,
and hence prices, in other countries of the region. If
production in one country is poor then farmers might
reasonably expect prices to rise as traders compete
for the limited crop available. However, if a neighbouring
country has had a bumper crop larger
traders may be able to get much of their requirements
from that country. The price they will be prepared
to pay locally will then be related to the cost of
the maize in the other country and the differences in
transport costs.
It is important to stress that demand is a commercial
concept and is not the same as need or requirements.
For example, consumers in a country may each need to
consume the equivalent of 150 kg of maize a year in
order to obtain the required level of nutrition. But many
may not be able to afford 150 kg. Effective demand for
maize represents what people can afford to buy, together
with anything the government may buy in order to
feed poorer people. Demand may therefore be significantly
less than 150 kg per capita.
Location
While the supply and demand of maize will influence the
general level of prices and the price trends, the actual
price at which the farmer can sell his maize will depend
on other factors as well — location is one of them.
Some reasons for this are discussed below:
- distance from the market. It will cost a lot less to
transport a bag of maize from a farm which is 20 km
from a mill than from one which is 200 km from a
mill. Therefore, farmers who live close to major markets,
that is towns and cities, will almost always
receive higher farm-gate prices.
- condition of roads. Those maize farmers who live
close to a main road which is in a good state of
repair will earn more for their maize than farmers living
the same distance from a city but at the end of a
minor road in very bad condition. Transport costs will
be much lower and therefore traders will prefer to
visit villages close to a main road, and will be able to
pay more.
- quantity of maize available. Transport costs per bag
of maize usually go down as the size of the truck
used increases. Locations where farmers have
available sizeable quantities can attract larger
trucks. With lower transport costs, traders can pay
more. Moreover, an important cost for traders can be
the time it takes them to buy maize. The quicker the
trader can buy a truckload, the quicker he can sell
the maize and the quicker he can return to the rural
areas to buy more maize. The more often traders
can buy and sell, the greater their profit, so they will
pay higher prices in areas where it is easier to buy
maize in suitable quantities, for example at local collection
points or local markets.
- the amount of competition between traders. Where
there is a lot of maize available there are likely to be
several traders trying to buy it. For the reasons indicated
above, they will want to maximize their purchases
as quickly as possible and may increase
their prices in order to persuade farmers to sell to
them. However, in a situation where there is not
much grain available, there will be little incentive for
traders to go to a village. If only one or two traders
visit a village then there will be little competition and
the prices paid will be much lower.
Time of the year
While the level of prices will vary every year according
to the general level of price inflation and the size of the
harvest, they will almost always follow the same seasonal
pattern. For a country which begins its harvest in
April or May, it can be expected that consumer prices
will be rising in the December to March period. In April
they may stay more or less the same until the end of the
month and then prices will begin to fall as a lot of new
maize becomes available. Prices will continue to fall
until June and will start to rise slightly in July, rising more
steeply towards the end of the year.
The consumer price mirrors the price paid to the
farmer. Normally, the farmer prices rise and fall a couple
of weeks before the consumer price does as it takes
some time for changes in the price of the raw material
(maize) to filter through into changes to the maize meal
price. However, this may not always be the case. A sudden
shortage in the city could lead to a meal price rise
which would only later result in higher maize prices to
farmers. Factors affecting the seasonal price pattern are:
- immediately after harvest farmers need to sell some
produce to raise cash. They will try to sell at least as
much maize as they need to sell in order to raise
enough cash to meet their needs;
- although prices go down, demand is, as we have
seen, relatively inelastic. Thus there will not be a
major increase in consumption and prices are
unlikely to be forced upwards unless there is strong
demand in neighbouring countries;
- many urban consumers have small gardens of their
own and will be able to grow enough to meet their
maize needs for at least a few months. Others will
receive maize from relatives living in nearby villages;
- a few months after harvest farmers realize that the
storage they have is not good enough for storing
maize during the rainy season and they sell much of
the remainder of their crop. They also worry that no
traders will visit their village during the rainy season;
- some months after harvest, traders, who will be continuing
to try to buy as much as possible, will find it
increasingly difficult to obtain maize and will raise
their prices as a result. Clearly, the extent to which
prices go up will depend on the size of the harvest.
Price rises may be very small when there is a large
surplus crop;
- if traders feel that the price of maize is likely to go up
a lot they may try to buy maize cheaply at the beginning
of the season and store it until the price goes up
enough for them to sell at a profit. This is not a wide-spread
practice on domestic markets at present
because most smaller traders lack the money to
store large quantities. However, large trading companies
also operate in Africa and these may buy produce
early in the season for subsequent export;
- if farmers feel that the price of maize will go up they
may decide to store it and wait for higher prices. In
countries which have only recently changed their
marketing system this is also not a widespread practice,
partly because farmers do not have suitable
stores but also because they still have an insufficient
understanding of the way the market operates;
- the extent to which prices increase towards the end
of the season will depend on the price of maize in
neighbouring countries. If imports are possible, the
price will only go as high as the price in the next
country, plus transport costs;
- finally, expectations of a good harvest will permit
farmers to sell the stocks they have kept for family
use, if they can produce enough to replace these.
This may lead to a stabilization of or reduction in
prices even before new harvest becomes available.
Information
The extent to which various kinds of market information
are available has an important influence on prices.
Collecting price information
Examples of information and how it can be used are:
- if farmers know what prices traders are paying in
their area they are better able to negotiate with the
traders to obtain good prices;
- if farmers and traders know that the harvest has
been bad in many parts of the country they can then
make a decision to store maize for some months, in
expectation of price rises later in the season;
- if farmers and traders know what the prices are in
neighbouring countries they can then make informed
guesses about how high the prices in their country
are likely to go.
Quality
In the days of marketing boards there usually existed
standards relating to moisture content, damaged kernels
and foreign-matter content. One of the factors contributing
to the problems of the boards was that these standards
were sometimes inadequately applied, if at all.
Under the private marketing system there are rarely formal
standards for domestic trade, although standards
remain very necessary for international trade.
Although there may be no formal standards, traders
and millers are still very aware of quality and, in effect,
apply their own, unofficial standards. This may explain
why they may offer one price to one farmer and a different
price to another farmer in the same village.