Liberalization and agricultural marketing : Recent causes and effects in third world economies

From merely being the dream of some economists a few years ago, the liberalization of national marketing systems has suddenly taken a tangible form on a worldwide scale. Why have governments, hitherto clinging to state participation and controls, especially in their agricultural and currency trading systems, changed their policies so swiftly? Are market structures, entrepreneurial and private-sector financing potentials capable of filling the gaps? Will the liberalization move lead of the envisaged competitive market and price mechanism with its resource- mobilizing effects, or will this move, lacking efficient implementation, get stuck somewhere in-between, inviting resurrection of interventionist policies? This article provides both evidence and analysis on these questions, in an introductory assessment of the dynamic process of radical policy changes faced by the food and agricultural marketing systems in most developing countries today.