College of Agriculture & Natural Resources Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics

Non-AFRE Co-Principle Investigators: Charles Slater - Co-Director, John Wish, Marketing and Transportation Dept, J McNelly and Vince Farace, Communicatins Dept, and Herman Koenig, Systems Science Dept, MSU

Project Name:           Food Marketing in the Economic Development of Puerto Rico - LAMP Country Study*
Donor:                        Agency for International Development
Contract No:              AID/CSD-786
Account No:      
Location:                    Puerto Rico
Duration:                    April 1965-June 1966
Budget:                       Portion of the budget listed in “LAMP Summary”

Documents:                (Click here to view)  

Project Goals:           To obtain insights into the role of food marketing in economic development in Puerto Rico, and to evaluate the efforts to foment changes in food marketing as part of a more general economic development program.

Project Plans/Objectives:

• To measure and analyze the changes that took place in the Puerto Rican food marketing system over the 15-year period, 1950-1965.
• To make recommendations for further improvements in the Puerto Rican food marketing system.
• To develop research methodologies useful in appraising marketing problems in other Latin American countries.
• To draw inferences and to formulate hypotheses concerning the role of food marketing in economic development.

Cooperating Institutions: Puerto Rican Department of Commerce, at the University of Puerto Rico--the Social Science Research Center, the Agricultural Extension Service, the College of Agriculture at Mayaguez, and the Department of Economics, the Government Departments of Agriculture and Economic Planning; Latin American Studies Center at MSU

Project Summary. The marketing study conducted in Puerto Rico as the first research endeavor in the Latin American Marketing Program lead to a second AID-funded project to establish the Latin American Market Planning Center.

Documents From/About This Project:

• The Role of Food Marketing in the Economic Development of Puerto Rico: Seminar Summary. 1966. Edited by Robert W. Nason. Latin American Studies Center Monograph.
• Marketing: One Answer to Poverty; Food Marketing and Economic Development in Puerto Rico, 1950-1965.  1969. By Wish, John R. and Kelly M. Harrison
• Food Marketing in the Economic Development of Puerto Rico. 1970.  By Harold Riley, Charles Slater, Kelly Harrison, John Wish, John Griggs, Vince Farace, Jose Santiago and Idalia Rodriquez.  Research Report No. 4. Marketing in Developing Communities Series. Latin American Studies Center, MSU.

*This description is adapted from work by Nancy E. Horn, an MSU alumnus from the Anthropology Department, published in 1985 “A Project History of Michigan State University’s Participation in International Development for the period 1951 – 1985”.  See AFRE Emeritus Faculty - Acknowledgements