The author would like to acknowledge the trouble taken by the many organizations which completed the FAO questionnaire on Market Information Services. Following receipt of the completed questionnaires, certain countries were selected for more in-depth study and the contributions of those who carried out these studies are also much appreciated.
A shorter, draft version of this publication was presented to the South African Agriculture Outlook Conference, held in Pretoria in February, 1996 and the author is grateful to the organisers for the invitation to take part. Alexander Schalke collaborated with the author on that presentation and on an earlier study of the Indonesian Horticultural Market Information Service.
The author’s colleagues in the Marketing and Rural Finance Service of FAO, Olivio Argenti, Stefano Farolfi, Jaime Novoa, Edward Seidler and Richard Roberts contributed to and commented on drafts. Former colleagues Hans Mittendorf and Eberhard Reusse also provided valuable insights. Aad van Tilburg of Wageningen Agricultural University and Clemens Lutz of the Univeristy of Groningen, both in the Netherlands, prepared a detailed paper for FAO on the theory underlying market information, which served as the basis for Chapter 2 of this publication.
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