ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the changing characteristics of agricultural markets and explores the dual role of the market as a means to transport, process, store, and as an information system that connects produce with consumers in terms of place, time and form. These roles make the market system a key instrument for imposing change on the farm community, change generated for the most part by urban needs. Agricultural geographers have contributed little to current market issues, particularly the problems facing agriculture in the industrialized world. Efforts to apply existing spatial theories about markets reveal incomplete analyses of the complexities of demand and the nature of national agricultural policies. Removal of these shortcomings would strengthen the contribution of geographers to rural planning, policy, and development issues. The difficulty of disentangling the market issue from broader agricultural policy concerns; the inherent complexity of market relationships, and their wide-ranging impact, all pose serious difficulties for geographers anxious to explore this important yet neglected field.
