It refers to economically adding value to agricultural food product so as to form characteristics more preferred by the consumer in the market. That is enhancement of the value of the farm produce before they are taken to market or to the final consumer.
Value addition in different in areas can take many forms including processing, branding, cleaning, packaging preservation and sorting.
South Sudan can consider adding value to livestock products such as meat and milk as the country is considered to be more engaged in livestock rearing second to oil export where the economy of South Sudan depends. They can also add value to fish.
Key Strategies for Adding Value
- Changing physical state of products
- Producing enhanced value products
- Bundling products
- Producing more products that improve efficiency up the supply chain
- Owning assets up the supply chain for example cattle producers process & sell their own meat, dairies market their own organic ice cream.
- Producing products in ways that enhance value through growing organic crops, producing antibiotic and hormone-free beef, producing free-range chickens
- Differentiating agricultural products in order to enhance their value like selling beef under a branded beef label
Benefits of value addition
- Agro processing has a tremendous potential for increasing income through value addition
- The value addition activity is very important to the farmer because it increases the value of the raw materials and enables the farmer to fetch better prices from the market.
- Value addition is the factor for the country’s export driven economic growth and deeper penetration of international markets
- Manufacturing value added is a key to capturing deeper exports and industry specific capabilities at the firm level.
- Increased value addition for the targeted commodities which result in increased incomes of the participating smallholder households
- Increasing shelf life and access to food security through the establishment of small scale agro processing businesses and rural agro based industries