This paper uniquely focuses on rapidly-developing domestic value chains in Africa’s emerging bioeconomy. It uses a comparative case study approach of a public and private cassava outgrower scheme in Ghana to investigate which contract farming arrangements are sustainable for both farmers and agribusiness firms. A complementary combination of qualitative and quantitative methods is employed to assess the sustainability of these institutional arrangements.
Although agricultural value chain resilience is a crucial component to food security and sustainable food systems in developing countries, it has received little attention. This paper synthesizes knowledge from the social-ecological systems (SES), supply chain management, and value chain development literature to make three contributions to this research gap. First, it is conceptualized the agricultural value chain resilience and relate it to overall food system resilience.
The worldwide importance of crop production is undisputed due to its function for basic nutrition of billions of people. Yet, the emergence of global forces implies severe consequences for the organization of crop value chains. These forces particularly include processes of liberalization and deregulation, the dominance of large retail groups as well as ever-changing consumer demands, leading to continuous reconfigurations of crop value chains.
Traditional approaches addressing hunger, typically based on agricultural development, are deemed insufficient alone to address the problem and attention is now being directed to food value chains, although experience is currently limited. To assess the state of science and identify knowledge gaps, an integrative review of the broad topic of value chains and diet quality was undertaken, with particular focus on interventions and their related impact pathways.
Existing studies which have examined the impact of group farming on farm productivity have focused predominantly on former socialist regimes, usually comparing production under various types of collectivised/cooperatized farms with farm enterprises that emerged in the post-reform period, or after decollectivisation. Given this specificity, their experience is at best indicative; it cannot provide substantive lessons on the potential outcomes of group farming in today’s developing countries. This paper seeks to do so.
This paper collects and examines the experiences of the leaders of the U.S. North Central Region’s entire set of farm link services, including both active and closed programs. The research question explored is, what do farm link program leaders view as best practices in serving the needs of farm seekers and farm owners who do not have a family successor, and what do their recommendations suggest for investment and policy going forward?
This paper analyzes smallholder farmers' willingness to pay (WTP) for the purchase of scale-appropriate farm mechanization in the hill ecologies of Nepal using the case of mini-tiller technology: a small, 5–7 horsepower two-wheel tractor primarily used for agricultural land preparation.
Most of the existing literature focus on the cultivation of crops and vegetables, and lack relevant research of the Chinese dairy industry. Meanwhile there lacks micro data on adoption of raw milk safety measures by Chinese smallholder dairy farmers in the macro context of changing dairy industry. To fill this gap, a field survey was conducted in Inner Mongolia, which has the largest raw milk production base, dairy enterprises and diversified production types.
In this study the farmers were first asked to answer two sets of statements related to views on climate change and experiences on changes so far in their own farm or nearby locations.
The EU rural development policy has addressed challenges related to climate change in agriculture by introducing public voluntary schemes, which financially support the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices. Several factors, most of which are non-financial ones, drive adoption and continuation of these schemes by farmers. Despite the importance of these factors, only a few studies explore their role in the European context. This paper contributes to filling this gap from a twofold perspective.