Cover_Rebuilding West Africas Food Potential

432 Rebuilding West Africa’s food potential

Over time, marketing costs have experienced little change, despite the overall increase in transport,

bagging, storage and handling costs. End intermediaries, whose business has become very competitive

over the years and opportunities, have endured this margin erosion.

Essentially, the marketing sector is still very informal, and many transactions are in cash. The system

is based on the speed and the multiplication of trade transactions. Resorting to bank credit is limited,

except for important traders and residual processors.

C. Other institutional actors

These essentially have a humanitarian and / or food security role, ensuring that strategic stocks are in

place so that they may be redistributed when appropriate in a timely manner. In doing so, they interfere

with trade flows and prices. They include the World Food Programme (WFP) and Non Governmental

Organizations (NGOs).

Professional producers try to organize themselves into groups, cooperatives and unions as they now have

a broader awareness of their vulnerability in power relations with other actors. This movement is growing

throughout the country, and is organized at the village level in cooperatives and at municipal level in

cooperative unions; these are then grouped into larger platforms at national level. It is estimated that more

than 90 percent of the rice farmers belong to an organized and operational group in their area. More than

2 million producers are thus organized and represented, broadening the landscape of actors.

The PAO’s main role is to negotiate loans by establishing themselves as credible spokespersons with

microfinance institutions. They also aim to add more value after the harvest by directly handling

processing and marketing. In addition they have an advocacy role when dialoguing with the state.

2.3 Economics of the rice value chain in Mali

A. Price formation

In these commercial networks, flows and marketing volumes depend on production surpluses^6 , linked to

how successful the crop year is, producers’ cash needs, the number of traders and the demand for rice.

Prices stem from these commercial quantities, the rice quality and the production area.

More generally, the formation of consumer prices, which influence the added value’s outcome, is also based

on many other factors: the international price of rice, the importance of imports, tax exemptions, import

market concentration, special import taxes, domestic rice supply, supply of other domestic dry cereals – that

is rainfall – the importance of institutional buying, or in contrast destocking of strategic provisions, atomicity

of the collection market, etc.

(^6) Surplus production: production obtained by deducting the fraction consumed on farm from total production.
Commodity production is estimated at about 70 percent and consumption on farm at about 30 percent of the
total production.