The market orientation index is used as a measure to distinguish between households that are producing goods destined for the market. The index that we present below gives more importance to agricultural activities that are more marketable.

This metric focuses on cash crops and the land allocated to these crops. It is important for the scientist to obtain information that is context-specific on what are considered to be cash crops (these may be traditional cash crops as defined nationally or regionally). The scientists may also have an option to define the cash crop for their study. A threshold may be set as, for example, for crop X, if y% is sold to the market, then it is considered a cash crop. For instance, Frelat et al.