Research Articles (Agricultural Economics)

Permanent URI for this collection

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1

The development of vegetable enterprises in the presence of transaction costs among farmers in Omusati Region of Namibia : an assessment
(Elsevier, 2020) Vink, Nick; Thomas, Benisiu
The paper investigates how transaction characteristics influence the development of vegetable enterprises among smallholder farmers in north-central Namibia. As transaction costs are difficult to measure the theoretical framework of analysis is based on transaction costs economics of new institutional economics. The results revealed that the spot market-based governance structure was the most preferred market arrangements by smallholders farmers in north-central Namibia because vegetable farmers struggle to meet the quality and quantity standards as required by the contractors market-based and commission market-based arrangements. The results also suggest that due to incomplete information, farmers and market agents suffer from high transaction costs. Skewed information distribution between farmers and marketing agents leads to slow development of vegetable enterprises. The study recommends that information shared to farmers must be packaged in an adequate manner to minimise transaction costs in the vegetable value chain.