WhatsApp or SMS: 07087083227
Click here to Get The Complete Research Project Chapter 1-5

Full Project – Computerized agricultural produce marketing system

Click here to Get this Complete Project Chapter 1-5

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Agricultural production in Nigeria and Africa as a whole have been facing several challenges which hold back both producers and buyers from profitability due to the lack of sustainable investment and the presence of unreliable markets. Despite the population growth and urbanization, the agricultural sector has not met the huge demands of the farmers in business perspective, regardless of being the backbone of the economy in many Sub-Sahara countries as observed by Afenyo(2007). The 2008 world development report, points out that many African countries have failed to explore the significance of the role of agriculture for the purpose of reducing poverty in rural areas. This indicates that there is little effort deployed on the agricultural sector which leads to many farmers living in poverty.

Computerized Agricultural Produce Marketing System is an online Agro shopping system to help maximize agro production sales, improve quality delivery and solve the problem of inaccessible geographical location in agro product sales. Under the existing manual selling practice, a few traders and commission agents indulge in irregularities. For instance, many costs, including market fee, commission fee and other unauthorised deductions are made, resulting in a dent in the farmers’ profits.

Further after the negotiations are completed, most traders and agents delay payments to farmers. To address all these issues, the online agricultural produce marketing system to be designed will play an important role to the nation and farmers at large by placing their products online and reducing unnecessary cost from manual selling practice. Under the system, a trader or a agent can bid for the stocks online and transfer the money directly into the farmers account through online banking. In many countries, and virtually every less developed country (LDC), agriculture is the biggest single industry.

Agriculture typically employs over fifty percent of the labour force in LDCs with industry and commerce dependent upon it as a source of raw materials and as a market for manufactured goods. Hence many argue that the development of agriculture and the marketing systems which impinge upon it are at the heart of the economic growth process in LDCs. Moreover as Kriesberg(1974) points out in LDCs the consumer frequently spends in excess of fifty percent of the household’s income on basic foodstuffs – much of which is inadequate both in quality and nutritional content. By contrast Americans spend approximately twelve percent of their total disposable income on food. In Western Europe the figure ranges from about sixteen to nineteen percent of disposable income.

According to Barua, Chcllappa and Whinston(1996), the Internet provides new opportunities and challenges for businesses around the globe. Computerized system has resulted in new business relationships and enabled new markets, new business, and new marketing paradigms. In its broad sense, computerized systems include all transactions which use Information Technology. It encompasses everything that allows us to electronically gather, generate, store, analyze, distribute, or otherwise use information. Computerized or web based systems provides existing customers with another avenue to disseminate product information and link into a new customer base. It is similar with other businesses that agribusiness face the challenge of changing their business model significantly and practicing to incorporate Internet activities. Many agribusinesses have capitalized on the advantages of e-business to improve the marketing and trading of their products.

Shapiro(1999) opines that there are still many benefits about the potential success of computerized systems (information technology) in agriculture. Common agribusiness business-to-business (B2B) transactions such as buying, selling, trading, delivering, and contracting seem to be natural targets for conversion to e-commerce.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

The problem of poor marketing system in the country whereby farmers struggle to market their farm produce is of importance and led to the design of this project work. Many regions in Nigeria have different aspect of crops or agricultural products in which they produce in large quantities. Most at times these farmers struggle to market their farm produce leading to the decay and destruction of perishable products. Poor Transportation of Agricultural products is the main obstacle in the way of efficient marketing. The rural areas are not linked with the market by roads. A lot of agricultural product is wasted due to problem of transportation which led to the choice of topic.During the harvest season, farmers have difficulties getting their crops to the market due to the fact that the government does not put adequate efforts in coordinating the whole process of enabling farmers to deliver those crops to the larger markets. The end up delivering it to the same customers in the same market which many at times leads to damage of most of the farm produce. The major challenge is the lack of a better agricultural market system which is crucial for connecting those farmers and buyers who live in the cities and all the parts of the countries.

Agriculture is one main aspect of revenue generation in Nigeria before the discovery of crude oil. Cypher(2008) observed that in Tanzania, the number of agricultural households in the Dares Salaam region was 35,160 out of which 21,786 (62%) was involved in growing crops only and 4.2 percent of the total number of crops grown by households was sold. The rest of the harvests were damaged due to the lack of reliable markets and absence of vital information between farmers and local buyers.Therefore this work will help to reduce the amount of wasted agro products by establishing a partnership with the famers to help convey the products to the buyers through computerized marketing system.

1.3 Aim and Objectives of the Project

The aim of this work is to design a Computerized Online Agricultural Produce Marketing system. The specific objectives include,

To implement online virtual agricultural marketplace
To develop software that enhances customers purchasing decision
To design an agricultural produce database for the software

1.4 Significance of the Project

Computerized Online Agricultural Produce Marketing system assists us to purchase farm products that we are lacking. Buying and selling of agricultural products is very important to our everyday life, it is very important that we have to market our agricultural products to people that needs it. Marketing is highly regarded everywhere in the whole parts of the world. The following are some significance of this Work:

The secured site for electronic commerce will help the people of Nigeria to get rid of risk in carrying cash around and the convenience of shopping anytime of the day.
It will reduce the risk of transportation, since the customer does not have to travel far to shop for any items or goods.
It will reduce the risk of authentication of the product and improved business transaction as customers are now sure of the originality of the product they purchased.

1.5 Scope of the Project

This project looks into the processes involved in buying and selling of agro products online for farmers to help minimize the loss and cost of transporting products from one market to another, where some goods end up being damaged on the course of unnecessary movement.This project is concentrated on the development of an online virtual agricultural marketplace. Online Shopping is one of the web applications to improve the marketing of the Agricultural products.

1.6 Limitation of Studies

The two major limitations of this study are the time limits within which the study is expected to be completed as well as financial constraints. The time constraint prevents the researcher to have an in depth study and analysis on the subject matter. While the issue of financial constraint limits the frequency of investigation to the company toward gathering the necessary information relevant for the study.

1.7 Definition of Terms

Marketing System: A market system is the network of buyers, sellers and other actors that come together to trade in a given product or service.
Agriculture: Agriculture is the cultivation of land and breeding of animals and plants to provide food, fiber, medicinal plants and other products to sustain and enhance life.
Computer: An electronic machine capable of accepting data in the form of input, processes it under a set of complete condition, stores information or request for references and generates result in the form of output.
HTML: HTMLprovides the basic structure of sites, which is enhanced and modified by other technologies like CSS and JavaScript.
CSS: CSSis used to control presentation, formatting, and layout.
JavaScript: JavaScriptis used to control the behavior of different elements.
WampServer: WampServer refers to a software stack for the Microsoft Windows operating system, created by Romain Bourdon and consisting of the Apache web server, OpenSSL for SSL support, MySQL database and PHP programming language.
Hypertext: Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, or where text can be revealed progressively at multiple levels of detail.

Get the Complete Project

This is a premium project material and the complete research project plus questionnaires and references can be gotten at an affordable rate of N3,000 for Nigerian clients and $8 for international clients.

Click here to Get this Complete Project Chapter 1-5

You can also check other Research Project here: