Agriculture remains a cornerstone of Ghana’s economy. The sector employs the labour force and contributes to GDP, food security, and export earnings. Successive governments have made significant efforts to modernise the agricultural sector through mechanisation programmes, fertiliser subsidies, irrigation projects, and farmer-based organisation support.
In addition, development partners such as the World Bank, GIZ, USAID, and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) have invested heavily in improving productivity and post-harvest systems.
Despite these commendable investments, Ghana’s agricultural sector continues to grapple with persistent challenges.
Farmers frequently face price volatility, post-harvest losses, weak market linkages, and limited access to consumers.
Production gets the attention, while marketing, the link between farm and consumer, is often overlooked. Consequently, farmers operate without fully grasping consumer preferences, branding strategies, or distribution networks.
In recent years, national initiatives such as the “Eat Ghana, Wear Ghana, and Buy Made in Ghana” campaigns, promoted by the government and media outlets such as Citi FM, have aimed to shift consumer preferences toward local products.
However, these efforts have not translated into sustained changes in consumption behaviour. This gap underscores a fundamental reality: agriculture without marketing is incomplete.
To transform agriculture into agribusiness, Ghana must integrate marketing principles into every stage of the agricultural value chain.
This paper argues that marketing is the missing link in Ghana’s agribusiness development.
It explores six critical marketing dimensions—consumer psychology, product development, pricing strategy, promotion, place and distribution, and brand development—and how these can collectively transform the sector.
The centrality of marketing in agribusiness development
Marketing serves as the interface between production and consumption.
It identifies consumer needs, designs products to meet those needs, determines appropriate pricing, promotes awareness, and ensures that products reach consumers efficiently.
In agriculture, marketing extends beyond selling; it includes demand creation, value addition, and relationship management between producers, traders, and consumers.
In Ghana, the failure to adopt marketing-led approaches has created a mismatch between agricultural supply and market demand.
Farmers often grow crops based on tradition or subsidies rather than market analysis. Consequently, gluts and price collapses are common during harvest seasons.
A marketing-driven agribusiness sector would align production with market signals, ensuring profitability, competitiveness, and sustainability.
Consumer psychology: understanding the Ghanaian buyer
Consumer psychology examines how individuals make purchasing decisions, interpret product value, and form brand preferences.
In Ghana, consumer perceptions toward locally produced goods remain mixed.
Urban dwellers associate imported goods with superior quality, attractive packaging, and greater prestige, whereas domestic products are frequently seen as less dependable or lower in quality.
To address this, agribusinesses must invest in consumer insight research, identifying motivators such as health consciousness, freshness, affordability, and national pride.
Understanding these psychological triggers allows marketers to design messages that appeal to emotion and identity.
For example, branding locally milled rice as “purely Ghanaian and pesticide-free” taps into both national pride and health consciousness.
Moreover, applying theories from behavioural economics, such as nudge theory, can help shape consumer behaviour toward local products through small, consistent interventions like default placement on supermarket shelves or loyalty rewards for buying local.
Product development and value addition
Product development in agriculture involves improving or creating new products that meet market needs. In Ghana, a large proportion of agricultural produce such as cassava, mangoes, tomatoes, and maize, is sold in raw form with minimal value addition.
This limits farmers’ income potential and exposes them to price fluctuations.
Value addition through processing, packaging, and differentiation can increase market value. For instance, converting cassava into high-quality gari, flour, or starch for industrial use adds multiple layers of value.
Similarly, fruit drying, juicing, and canning industries can extend product shelf life and create employment opportunities.
Successful product development also requires attention to quality standards and certification. Ghanaian agribusinesses must comply with standards from the Ghana Standards Authority and the Food and Drugs Authority to access export markets.
Universities and research institutions such as the University of Professional Studies, Accra and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) can partner agribusiness firms to innovate new product forms and conduct consumer acceptance testing.
In sum, product innovation and market-oriented development create competitive advantages for Ghanaian agriculture both domestically and internationally.
Pricing strategy: balancing fairness and profitability
Pricing is one of the most delicate aspects of agricultural marketing.
In Ghana, price determination is often left to intermediaries or traders, leaving farmers with minimal bargaining power.
The absence of organised market information systems exacerbates this problem.
Adopting structured pricing strategies based on cost analysis, market trends, and consumer willingness to pay can improve transparency and profitability.
Modern agribusiness firms use data analytics to determine optimal price points that balance affordability and producer margins. Additionally, psychological pricing (pricing at GHS 9.90 instead of GHS 10) can subtly influence consumer decisions.
Government policies should also facilitate fair-trade arrangements and digital platforms that provide real-time pricing data to farmers.
Mobile applications and electronic marketplaces demonstrate how technology can democratise price information.
The goal should be a market-led pricing ecosystem, where prices reflect both cost realities and consumer value perceptions.