4

 Collins and Holton (5) have also challenged the view that marketing

firms and institutions will automatically spring up in response to price

incentives to provide the services most appropriate for new production

situations. They argue that effective planning for economic development

should give a great deal of attention to facilitating the development of

marketing institutions to complement programs for expanding physical

production.

 There seems to be a growing consensus among agricultural economists that

aligns with the broader, more dynamic view of marketing as a major element

in the development of the agricultural sector and in coordinating agri-

culture with growth and development in other sectors. Hence, food production,

processing and distribution activities are seen as a closely interrelated set

of activities that operate in a "systems" context. The system includes the

familiar components of farm production, rural assembly, processing, distri-

bution (both rural and urban), and the flow of industrially produced agricul-

tural inputs and consumer goods to rural markets. In the more rural based

economies these activities take place within rural market towns and their

hinterlands but as development progresses the influence of larger urban

centers becomes more important.

 A simplified conceptual model was developed by a Michigan State Univer-

sity research team to illustrate a particular application of a "food system"

approach to a marketing development program in Northeast Brazil. See

Figure 1. The left hand column in the figure lists five system components

which are potential points of public sector intervention into a regional

or national food system where the program objective is to stimulate economic

growth and development. The vertical ordering of the system components

gives emphasis to a "demand driven" system but there are important supply and