CEDARS program
Development of an Agricultural Central Market project

Duration
September 2002 - September 2005

Funding Partners
Cooperative Housing Foundation (CHF)
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

Implementing Partners
Economic Development Advisory Committee (EDAC)

Objectives
Establishment of a Marketing Center with modern machinery, including fresh-cut processing of agricultural produce, to provide various processing services with proper quality control programs.
Creation of an Information Center by developing a database, software, and a website to match demand and supply of agricultural and agro-food products.
Development of relations between farmers and traders and collaboration with export agencies and companies to improve and facilitate local and foreign export marketing channels.
Establishment of links between different stakeholders, such as hypermarkets, universities, research centers, etc.

 Description
This project consisted in developing an Agricultural Central Market that provides information services on prices and quantities of available agricultural products. It aimed at making the market virtual and online, linking farmers, agro-food producers, exporters, processors, distributors, and buyers in order to form a virtual central market for trading of agricultural and agro-food products.

A database was developed for both the supply and demand sides of the market. This will allow for the exchange of updated information regarding the agricultural production market and the supply and distribution sources to be diversified, thereby ensuring continuous and regular supply. As for the provision of the marketing services, access to new and improved processing facilities will be provided to local farmers mainly by developing and equipping the Agricultural Center of the North (CAN). Such equipment included cleaning, cutting/peeling, and packaging machinery for the processing of vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, parsley, cucumber, tomato, and carrot.

Upon the completion of this project (september 2005), a new project under the CEDARSplus program, entitled Expand the Agricultural Central Market (Nationwide), was started to complete and enhance the work of the present project detailed above.