Concepts of Agribusiness Management and Its Elements

Agriculture as a business that is run by different stakeholders involved in it requires different skills in management of the scarce resources involved the production of goods and services for man.

Haven‘t known the scope of agribusiness and the nature of agricultural products, it imperative to know how to apply management concept in agricultural business.

Distinctive Features of Agri-business Management

The important distinctive features or the principle characteristics of agribusiness are as follows:

Management varies from business to business depending on the kind and type of business. It varies from basic producer to brokers, wholesalers, processors, packagers, manufacturers, storage proprietors, transporters, retailers etc.

Agri-business is very large and evolved to handle the products through various marketing channels from producers to consumers.

Management varies with several million of farmers who produce hundreds of food and livestock products.

There is very large variation in the size of agri-business; some are very large, while many other are one person or one family organization.

Most of the Agri-business units are conservative and subsistence in nature and family oriented and deal with business that is run by family members.

The production of Agri-business is seasonal and depends on farm production. They deal with vagaries of nature.

Agri-business is always market oriented.

They are by far vertically integrated, but some are horizontally integrated and many are conglomerated.

There is direct impact of government. programmes on the production and performance of Agribusiness.

People in many countries flock to the cities, complicating the problem of food, transportation, distribution and marketing. In the developing new nations, this marks the beginning of a shift from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture. The commercial agriculture cannot exist without the support of Agri-business and other industries.

The hungry countries are usually those with the highest percentage of their people in farming. This is because of their farmers are still close to subsistence farming.

The role of agricultural economist is to advice farmers on the commodities to be produced and the most economical methods of combining resources so as to maximize profits from the farm.

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What is Management?

There is no single definition of management. According to Henry Fayol, the father of principles of management, ―To manage is to forecast, to plan, to organize, to command coordinate and to control.

Frederick Winslow Taylor defined Management as knowing exactly what you want men to do and then seeing that they do it in the best and cheapest way.

Mary parker, - Management is the art of getting things done through people‖.

P. Drucker, - Management is a multi-purpose organ that manages a business, manages manager and manages worker and work‖.

George Terry, - Management is a distinct process consisting of planning, organizing actuating and controlling performance to determine and accomplish the objectives by the use of people and resources‖.

On the premise of the above definitions, we can define management as getting things done through others/subordinates. In other words, it is a process of various functions like planning, organizing, leading and controlling the business operations in such a manner as to achieve the business objectives set by the firm.

It consists of all activities beginning from business planning to its actual survival.

Concepts of Management

Some describe Management as division of the area of responsibility into finance, marketing, production and personnel.

Others look at the Management as six M concepts. These are money, market, materials, machinery, methods and manpower. Here the management is conceptualized as effective use of resources available.

Another concept is its division into approaches and processes. This includes industrial engineering management, institutional or organizational management and behavioral management.

Another concept is functional approach to management.

Functions and Elements of Agribusiness Management

Fayol identifies five of such functions. They are:

• Planning
• Organising
• Directing
• Co-ordination
• Control

In summary, management is applied in all facet of human existence including agriculture thus its knowledge is required in agricultural production, processing and marketing in allocation of scarce resources to increase productivity and profit in agricultural business.

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