and ultimate consumers, whether they be located within rural areas themselves or

in large urban areas. Even in semi-subsistence economies there are interdependencies

in the various stages in the farm production-assembly-processing, distribution and

cons-umption process. And even the current "equity with growth" type of rural

development being advocated in much of the current development literature in-

volves constant structural transformation of the rural and urban economy which

leads to greater interdependencies among agricultural production, distribution

and consumption processes. The most important marketing problems related to

achieving the desired structural transformation are in the design and promotion

of new technologies and new institutional arrangements which may be unprofitable

or unavailable to individual market participants, but if adopted by all par-

ticipants, could yield substantial system improvements.

 Some ten years ago, Pritchard stressed the importance of developing a

broad analytical framework for studying and solving agricultural marketing

problems in developing countries (19). He cautioned against using a narrowly

defined market structure framework which limited analysis to "those characteris-

tics of the organization of a market that seems to influence strategically the

nature of competition and pricing within the market." Pritchard outlined an

eclectic set of analytical procedures, bound together into a useful framework

by the concept of agricultural marketing as an organized, operating behavioral

system within the national economy. He emphasized the need to use the framework

to search for basic economic, technological and social constraints in the environ-

ment in which marketing systems function and change.

 A number of U.S. university researchers have approached broader diagnostic

assessments from such a perspective. Researchers at Harvard University have

extended their "Agribusiness Commodity Systems" approach to problems of export

market development in Central America and other areas (20). Phillips and his

colleagues in Food and Feed Grain Institute at Kansas State University have