ABSTRACT
Disposing of farm produce is as important as producing it. In this chapter we move away from the farm into the realms of trade, marketing and taxation, areas in which the farmer has to deal with forces outside agriculture. We begin with the off-farm disposal of produce in twentieth-century societies without money, then go on to discuss rural/urban market systems as they have evolved through more than a thousand years. This takes us then to some of the major changes of modern times, in which innovations in the commerce of food and fibre have succeeded the agrotechnical revolution of the past two centuries as a principal force having farreaching consequences for the family-scale farm.
