RESEARCH ON EXPORT ORIENTED HORTICULTURE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

ISHS Acta Horticulturae 135: VII Symposium on Horticultural Economics, XXI IHC

RESEARCH ON EXPORT ORIENTED HORTICULTURE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES - REVIEW AND OUTLOOK -

Author:

D.M. Hörmann

Abstract:
The Institute of Horticultural Economics has been dealing with questions of export orientated horticulture in developing countries for about nine years. The starting point for this field of research was the fact that the growing competition on the supply side from developing countries was increasingly alarming horticultural producers in developed countries (Carlsson & Storck, 1974). That is why the first investigations dealt with these conflicts and the possibilities of cooperation between industrial and developing countries in the production and sales of horticultural products. However, it soon became evident that in the past numerous projects, which were concerned with setting up an export orientated production of fresh horticultural products, were failing or were far from meeting the expectations put in them in terms of achievement. This situation resulted in a shift of research goals, in which the original formulation of the problem also became integrated to a certain degree.

Since then the focal points of this field of research have been directed towards:

providing insight into the competitive situation and the sales prospects for the relevant horticultural products,
contributing towards establishing causes responsible for the success or failure of an export orientated horticultural production, and finally
supplying for the planning of new and for present export orientated horticultural projects criteria for the assessment of the success and the competitive position as well as criteria for testing the effectiveness of the production and marketing system (Hörmann & Storck, 1981, p. 7).

Apart from the conditions for the creation of a competitive export orientated horticulture, it is also intended to use these criteria of success to examine the question as to how these efforts are to be valued as contributions to development policies.

The present report is attempting to offer a summary of these many years of research work. First of all it presents the activities which contributed in the institute directly and indirectly to this field of research before it looks into the evaluation scheme evolved for export orientated horticulture in developing countries. In further sections of the summary the special features of this approach are examined and the experience gained with it when carrying out feasibility and evaluation studies are reported. In addition statements are made about the

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