Small trading activities are a prevalent form of self-employment in developing countries, but their integration into supply value chains is not efficient, especially when it comes to perishable produce. This study tests a novel approach to improve their efficiency by reducing the time and cost of sourcing produce by aggregating purchases through the use of an app and centralized distribution system. Fruit and vegetable vendors in Bogotá currently travel most days to a central market to purchase produce, incurring substantial time and monetary costs.
Mongolia has a comparative advantage in agribusiness, especially downstream industries using livestock products. Yet its share in worldwide exports of agribusiness commodities is insignificant. Enhancing the efficiency of the central economic corridor (CEC) is vital to Mongolia’s effort to improve trade competitiveness and diversify exports. The role of Mongolia’s economic corridors is best understood when seen as an integral part of the country’s supply chain.
The purpose of Working with Smallholders handbook is to enable the development of more sustainable, resilient and productive supply chains for agribusinesses and to illustrate the substantial development impact. Smallholder farmers are both an opportunity and a challenge for food and agribusiness companies. The predominance of smallholders in many frontier and emerging markets makes them an integral part of agribusiness supply chains. Many firms source from smallholders or are actively seeking to source from them. Calls for fairer, more inclusive supply chains will hasten this trend.
The economic globalisation has opened new pathways for commerce and triggered a logistical revolution, which in turn has produced enormous technological innovations. In this context, the role of startups is becoming increasingly crucial since they are positioning themselves as innovation enablers among large and small companies. Between these innovations, IoT, Big Data Analytics and Blockchain can be used in various domains, among which the logistics of the whole wine supply chain.
China has put in place a series of policies to support private companies to engage in biotechnology research. This study uses data from a survey of 103 major agribusiness firms in the agricultural chemical and seed industries in China to evaluate the impact of government policies on private R&D investment in biotechnology. The results show that firms with positive profit expectation, public R&D subsidies, R&D collaboration with universities/research institutes or state-owned enterprises are more likely to embark on biotechnology research activities.
Dairy foods provide a significant portion of the recommended daily nutrition for much of the US population. Improving the availability of safe and nutritious dairy products and decreasing the environmental impact of the dairy community continue to be high priorities for both industry and the public sector. In recognition of these shared priorities, scientists and other specialists from the USDA, National Dairy Council, industry, academia, and nongovernmental organizations participated in the “Elevating Dairy Research and Extension Through Partnership” meeting on June 19, 2018.
After years of neglect, there is a renewed interest in agricultural mechanization in Africa. Since government initiatives to promote mechanization are confronted with major governance challenges, private-sector initiatives may offer a promising alternative. However, given limited scientific studies on such private-sector options such approaches are often viewed skeptically. One concern is that multi-national agribusiness companies take advantage of smallholder farmers. Another concern is that mechanization causes rural unemployment.
The mergers of some of the world's largest agribusinesses have led to speculation about what sort of global citizens the new companies will become and whether vulnerable rural populations, especially smallholder men and women farmers, will be negatively impacted. As innovation leaders in the agriculture industry, these new companies will be expected to play key roles in finding solutions for major agricultural challenges facing the world today.
La riqueza y la desigualdad continúan aumentando en todo el mundo, y aunque la última representa un desafío muy serio, la primera ofrece oportunidades para atender disparidades sociales y económicas que merecen ser analizadas. El sector filantrópico, como cualquier otro, muestra limitaciones y problemas, pero también ha brindado resultados e impactos significativos en áreas tan relevantes como educación, salud, pobreza, agricultura y ambiente, por citar algunos.
How can the transition and transformation towards more sustainable food and agriculture (SFA) materialize at country-level? Who will own, drive and be committed to this process? How can the process be sustainable and reach scale? The practical, "how-to" contribution titled "System-Wide Capacity Development for SFA" attempts to answer these questions.