Investigating the Marketing Efficiency of Selected Crops in Rural Small Family Farms: A Case Study (Basht County)

The importance of the market for agricultural products is as important as the production of the product. However, marketing has always been one of the major problems of smallholder and family farmers. The present descriptive survey research has investigated the marketing efficiency of agricultural products of rural small family farms. The study population included 2000 family farmers in Basht county in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad provinces. Using the Georgian and Morgan table, 322 of them were studied by random cluster sampling. A questionnaire was used to collect information, the validity of which was confirmed by referring to university professors, and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient. The results showed that the marketing efficiency of family farm agricultural products is equal to 2.5. In other words, one unit increase in product costs, 2.5 units in price increase, which is to the benefit of the producer and to the detriment of the consumer. However, with increasing levels of education, annual agricultural income, number of workers, local infrastructure services, and financial services, the marketing efficiency of products increases. Also, increasing in size of the owned land is inversely related to the numerical value of marketing efficiency. In other words, as the size of owned land increases, the numerical value of marketing efficiency decreases. With increasing in the annual cost of agriculture, the amount of marketing efficiency decreases. The results showed that the marketing efficiency of agricultural products of literate farmers as well as farmers with arable land size more than 1.5 hectares was higher than other farmers. In sum, only 0.3% of farmers had marketing with the desired efficiency (equal to one), and the highest efficiency was related to the path of producers to wholesalers. Establishing marketing cooperatives and promoting a suitable cultivation pattern are among the suggestions of the present study to increase the marketing efficiency of agricultural products.