Marketing can help agricultural problem

A recent study showed that in the Caribbean, agriculture is a billion-dollar problem, but with the right marketing tools, this agricultural problem can be solved.

This was revealed recently by Byron Gibson, a marketing consultant, during a workshop held at the Rural Development Commission. Gibson divulged that he had the opportunity to work on a project a few years
ago called CTA (The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation) which oversees agriculture for all of the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, and found that during the Caribbean week of Agriculture, the proportional representation at the event of Barbadian companies was disappointing in comparison to the sheer number of individuals that were involved in the event.

Gibson said that he believed that we still treat agriculture as though it is mainly a number of small farmers and people handling small crops.

“We still treat agriculture as though it is a small man’s game,” he said.

The marketing consultant revealed that he spent 13 years working as a consultant for Craft Foods for the Caribbean region and realised during his time there, just how much food was being imported into the island. What was even more devastating to him was the fact that the companies that he consulted for were able to take things and make them appealing to persons, which resulted in the success of many of the imported products.

He said that he believed that the marketing of the locally made products needed to be better advertised so that the sales of these products will continue to increase, which will result in a better and highly functional agricultural sector.

Gibson, who spent over 20 years in the marketing field as a marketing consultant to a few major companies, went on to say that perhaps the view of marketing is something that needs to be changed; explaining that marketing was
typically not always sales, or advertising.

He noted that the same marketing scheme will not work for everyone. According to him, marketing was a formula and you need to find the right one for your business.

“Marketing is not that rigid and for that reason you always have to pay attention to it because it is always changing. It is a combination of different things. It is a formula,” he said.