Agricultural marketing
Agricultural marketing describes the teaching of marketing in the agricultural and food industry within the field of agricultural economics . The collective term for all disciplines taught in agricultural faculties is agricultural sciences .
Historical background
During the time of National Socialism , the entire agricultural profession, including its associations and organizations, was combined in the so-called Reichsnährstand . This should improve the image of agriculture and the supply situation. After the Second World War , the period of reconstruction was also largely characterized by supply ideas that hardly made marketing in the traditional sense necessary. Agricultural markets were characterized by a policy of security of supply during the first half of the twentieth century. When the European Union was founded, agriculture was the second area after coal and steel ( Montanunion ) to be subject to European regulation. EU payments to agriculture were originally designed as price stability measures aimed at reducing crop-related price fluctuations. They later also served as price support , so they received an income-securing component. The resulting overproduction (e.g. so-called butter mountains ) in many areas made further interventions necessary, for example to reduce the surplus. Agriculture is still a strongly regulated area within the European Union, the design of which contained many planned economy elements and continues to do so today.
Development towards agricultural marketing
Until the end of the sixties of the twentieth century, research and teaching in agricultural economics therefore concentrated on the subject of agricultural market theory and agricultural policy . The idea of regulation continues in both terms. The role of the farmers themselves was taken into account as a research object by the sociology of agriculture. It was not until the seventies that there was a move towards marketing in the classic sense. The change to permanent surplus production posed both economic questions about the steering effect of agricultural policy and, from a business point of view, questions about how to act successfully on buyers' markets .
In the self-image of the emerging agricultural marketing, the farmer went from being an object of regulation to an independently operating economic subject . For the other elements of agribusiness in the upstream and downstream stages of agriculture, new answers could be found on the basis of agricultural market research , for example with the search for additional added value in the event of a decrease in consumer prices for food and a decrease in the share of consumer spending on food were connected.
The typical subject areas in agricultural marketing include sector-specific issues such as:
- Community marketing
- Regional marketing z. B. by means of designation of origin
- Direct marketing
- Quality mark (e.g. organic seal or animal welfare label )
- Vertical cooperation and integration
- and more
The highly regulated area of agriculture makes the marketing of agricultural products a special discipline within business administration to this day . Agricultural marketing is now taught in all agricultural faculties. Otto Strecker and his student Reimar von Alvensleben were among the pioneers of agricultural marketing in Germany .
literature
- Otto Strecker: Agriculture and its market partners: New forms of cooperation. Published by the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Forestry in cooperation with the Agricultural and Housekeeping Evaluation and Information Service eV (AID), Landwirtschaftsverlag, Hiltrup, 1963
- Otto Strecker: Community marketing for food, in: Agrarwirtschaft, 20. Jg. (1971), pp. 281–285
- Otto Strecker, Reimar von Alvensleben: The Unterland Corporation, case study from Harvard Business School, Boston, 1972
- Otto Strecker, Josef Reichert, Paul Pottebaum: Marketing for food. DLG-Verlag, Frankfurt, 1976
- Reimar von Alvensleben, Josef Ertl, Walter Robert Blum: Our agriculture - an interim balance. BLV, Munich, 1991
- Otto Strecker, Josef Reichert, Paul Pottebaum: Marketing in the agricultural and food industry. Verlags-Union-Agrar, Frankfurt, 1997
- Safak Aksoy; Erdener Kaynak: Exploring International Marketing Management for Fresh Produce in the World . A Potential Issue for More Business? In: Journal of International Food & Agribusiness Marketing . tape 5 , no. 2 , 1993, p. 93-109 , doi : 10.1300 / J047v05n02_05 .