Adding Value to a Product

The key to maximising profit, rather than seeing money being handed to middlemen, is to find ways of adding value to a product.

Support can be provided for the processing and marketing of primary products via the Rural Priorities of the SRDP programme (2014-2020).

The Agricultural Marketing Resource Center (US) has a tab on the homepage for ‘Business Development’ which looks at various aspects of starting an agribusiness.  There are a tremendous number of links contained within each section.

‘Adding Value to Agricultural Products’ (US) – a leaflet that provides Texan producers with some basic information about adding value and considers how the producer can capture extra income by adding value to a product.  Something well worth considering by Crofters as well as Texan producers!

The ‘Local Food Marketing Guide’ is a very useful publication produced in 2007 by the then Scottish Agricultural College, giving basic information about marketing local food.
‘In understanding how to market and sell local foods, the same principles apply as in trying to sell food to a national or international market. That is to say that the goods should offer something different to the person buying and eating the product.
‘In any business, there are a number of key marketing questions you should be able to answer. 
Do you know?:

• Who is going to eat your product, the end consumer?

• What are the characteristics of the consumers who will buy products from you?

• What consumer needs does your product satisfy?

• Who might, or will you be competing with?

• What are the available markets for your products?

• What will your customers expect in their relationship with you?

• What makes your product, or the way you sell or promote it, different to that of your competitors?

This guide aims to try to help you understand the market dynamics of marketing local food, by demystifying the marketing process, but firstly and most importantly by giving an explanation of what is meant by the term ‘local food’. The material in the guide is laid out in a simple fashion, to enable you to understand the various routes to marketing local produce. While many of the routes may be well known to you, give some consideration to those areas which you have not investigated, as there are numerous ways to get started in local produce.’