Digital technologies such as sensors, drones, satellites and blockchain are seen as a promising developments for value chain transparency. These technologies are often envisioned to enable more detailed, objective, and complete information collection, and to create secure, transparent and democratic ways of information sharing. The development of such digitally-enabled modes of information collection and analysis leads to what we term the rise of ‘hyper-transparency’.
The integration of male and female smallholders in high-end value chains (e.g. those for tree crops like cocoa, oil palm, avocado, and mango), has been promoted throughout the global South as a strategy for poverty alleviation, economic growth, employment generation, gender equality, and improved wellbeing. More critical literature, however, questions the inclusiveness of farmers’ value chain engagement. Despite rapid mainstreaming of inclusiveness in policy discourse, remarkably little literature sheds light on the operationalization of the concept. This paper addresses this gap.
Enabling the Business of Agriculture 2019 presents indicators that measure the laws, regulations and bureaucratic processes that affect farmers in 101 countries. The study covers eight thematic areas: supplying seed, registering fertilizer, securing water, registering machinery, sustaining livestock, protecting plant health, trading food and accessing finance. The report highlights global best performers and countries that made the most significant regulatory improvements in support of farmers
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.
While there is a lot of literature from a natural or technical sciences perspective on different forms of digitalization in agriculture (big data, internet of things, augmented reality, robotics, sensors, 3D printing, system integration, ubiquitous connectivity, artificial intelligence, digital twins, and blockchain among others), social science researchers have recently started investigating different aspects of digital agriculture in relation to farm production systems, value chains and food systems. This has led to a burgeoning but scattered social science body of literature.
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.
Global population growth, an increasing demand for animal products and scarcity of conventional feed ingredients drive the search for alternative protein sources for animal feed. Extensive research indicates that insects provide good opportunities as a sustainable, high quality and low-cost component of animal feed. Here, we discuss how insect farming can promote inclusive business for smallholder farmers in the agribusiness value chain.
The concept of inclusive business has gained a central place in development policy and practice. that the underlying premise is that by making small scale farmers part of their business model, companies can increase their profitability and at the same time contribute to farmers’ livelihoods. Despite a wealth of positive anecdotal evidence, it remains unclear whether and how a company can do this. This paper examines how agri-business should become (more) inclusive in contributing to food security.
La innovación está entre los principales atributos de supervivencia y mejora el desempeño de los negocios. Las empresas startups, conscientes de esta realidad, han introducido innovaciones disruptivas e incrementales en el mercado, para alcanzar mayor número de clientes y obtener éxito empresarial. Así, este artículo, presentado en forma de ensayo teórico, tiene como objetivo proponer un modelo conceptual que integre selección de tipologías y estrategias de innovación dirigidas a aumentar la práctica de innovación en startups, especialmente en el sector de tecnología de la información.
En este artículo se examina la relación entre la innovación de productos y capacidades organizacionales; luego el desarrollo de nuevas capacidades dinámicas empresariales permite asimilar, almacenar y aplicar el conocimiento asimilado, en la planificación y ejecución de las funciones y procesos. Las capacidades tecnológicas, las comerciales y las nuevas capacidades son clave para la innovación, el desarrollo de nuevos productos y la adaptación a los cambios del mercado.