FARMERS’ CHOICES IN THE VEGETABLE SUPPLY CHAIN: PROBLEMS AND POSSIBILITIES

The dynamics of the agri-food systems plays an important role in the development and the fast increase of the number of modern retail stores. Several driving factors contribute to this situation such as industrialization, globalization and multinational systems, foreign direct investments. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the marketing relationship type of small vegetable farms and to find out the marketing choice of the farmers. In this regard, a qualitative and quantitative analysis was employed using Williamson’s governance structure and probit models. The results confirm that the marketing choice is very limited especially with regard to their participation in retail chains. The obtained coefficients have the expected signs and show that small farmers prefer to sell individually due to several constraints: high entry costs, scale factors and even price mechanisms.