Developing A Marketing Model To Assist Free State Swine Producers To Maximize Profits

Abstract

Swine production in the past decades has increased tremendously. The turn of the previous millennium witnessed the agricultural product market changing from a predominantly producer dominated market approach to a demanding, well informed, consumer dominated market. Generally speaking, the agricultural industry had become more industrialized and more specialized. Swine production world over has increased due to technological advancements. Recently, the outbreak of swine fever (H5N1) in most part of the world, including South Africa has caused a lot of panic to the industry. This has led to the decline of swine consumption with a concomitant effect on swine production in most parts of the world, including the Free State Province of South Africa. In view of the aforementioned predicaments, it is then imperative that marketing professionals should come to the aid of swine producers by developing an effective marketing model that will assist them to maximize their profit. Therefore, primary objective of this study was aimed at developing a Marketing Model to assist Free State swine producers to maximize profits. The secondary objectives were: To Formulate the stocking rate to be adopted by swine producers in Free State. To determine the effect of distance to the market/abattoir on transportation cost. To determine to what extent Production cost, affect Gross income of Swine Producers in Free State. To determine to what extent the government agricultural policy affects Gross income of swine producers in Free State. To determine the extent access to bank loan affects Gross income of Swine Producers in Free State. Primary Data and Secondary Data sources were used for data collection in this study, but the overall focal point was with the primary data. The primary objective of this work which was to develop a Marketing Model that will assist Free State swine producers to maximize profit was achieved through the use of Primary Data and Secondary Data sources. The result of the quantitative survey was presented in Frequency Tables, Percentages, Means, Pearson Product Moment Correlation Co-efficient (PPMC), Regression analysis and t-test, analysis of variance (ANOVA). For the purpose of this study, the results of the quantitative survey were presented in Frequency Tables, Percentages, Means, Pearson Product Moment Correlation Co-efficient (PPMC), Regression analysis and t-test, analysis of variance (ANOVA). Analysis showed that access to government agricultural subsidy does not significantly affect Gross income of Swine Producers in Free State. The tested hypothesis proved that access to bank loan does not significantly affect Gross income of Swine Producers in Free State. Results from this study indicated that Production cost significantly affects Gross income of Swine Producers in Free State.