THE BIG DISTRIBUTION AND FRESH FRUIT AND VEGETABLES COMMODITY SYSTEMS

This communication aims at presenting a synthesis of the authors’ work in the field of fresh produce commodity systems while focusing on the marketing problems and their consequences on the location of production.
Three points will be outlined :

• the problem : the fruit and veg. commodity systems of the EEC at present face competition from two processes, the opening and enlargement of borders (EEC, GATT, ACP, mediterranean agreements) and distribution increasingly concentrated and functioning on a world scale (superettes, super, hypermarkets and their central buying offices),

• the methods : the starting point is the delimitation of a vertical field of investigations which is a commodity system.
  This permits us to use successively three different types of approaches : system analysis, market structure analysis and organization theory.
  During this process the field of investigations can be vertical, horizontal and spherical.
  Cross-checkings between the different fields of investigations are not only possible but essential,

• the results : they permit a better understanding of fruit and veg. marketing problems. "Big distribution" is faced by the necessity to supply its stores on a day by day basis, takes in constraints coming from the consumers, and processes and transfers them to the upper levels of the commodity systems through strategies.
  Compared with these, the farm marketing organizations are adapting more or less.
  The areas which do not have efficient marketing organizations are eliminated from the market.

Horticultural Economics and Marketing, XXIII IHC

J.C. MONTIGAUD, J. LACROIX, B. MOAL

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1991.295.20