Agribusiness Supply chain

In this work solutions used in logistics systems in milk processing companies were compared. The logistics solutions in this sector are still insufficiently recognized. A synthetic indicator of the level of logistics in the dairy companies covering all logistical functions was used. Individual weights were assigned to parameters taken under consideration. The results assessed the actual level of logistics in researched companies. Calculated results are describing the level of logistics solutions that were compared with assessments made by managers.

The study was conducted to depict the overall economics of papaya cultivation in four districts namely Tangail, Jashore, Bandarban and Rajshahi. The objectives of the study were to examine the cost structure, resource use productivities, profitability and the problems of papaya production. A total of 152 farmers taking 38 from each district were selected randomly. Data were collected through a pre-tested interview schedule during January-March, 2017. The per hectare use of human labour, plant protection, manures and fertilizer were found to be maximum at Jashore whereas, the per hectare use of saplings was found to be maximum at Tangail district. The per hectare cost of cultivation of papaya was high at Jossere (365405) followed by Tangail (Tk.334261), Rajshahi (Tk.319754), and Bandarban (Tk. 272664). The average per hectare yield were maximum at Jossere (62MT) followed by Rajshahi (55MT), Tangail (54MT) and Bandarban (52MT). Per hectare gross margin was the highest at Tangail (Tk. 802797) followed by Bandarban (Tk. 658441), Jashore (Tk. 536346) and Rajshahi (Tk.471298). Per hectare net return was highest at Tangail (Tk.633738) followed by Bandarban (Tk.507335), Jossere (Tk.346594) and Rajshahi (Tk.302747). The overall benefit cost ratio was 2.39 which indicates papaya cultivation was profitable in Bangladesh. The yield of papaya would increase by 0.0407, 0.125, 00.0627, 0.0863 and 0.3785 % if papaya farmers apply 1% additional human labour, seedlings/saplings, fertilizer, improved variety, and dummy for loamy soil. Attacks on viral disease, adverse weather condition, non-availability of reliable seed, lack of irrigation facilities, lack of technical knowledge and problems in marketing of papaya were the major constraints of papaya cultivation in the study areas.

Prior to ‘A Concept of Agribusiness’, agriculture was viewed as an independent sector from the other industries and it was understood in terms of markets and prices, thus overlooking the backward-forward linkages between the sector and other industries. John Davis and Ray Goldberg are celebrated not only for articulating this linkage, but also for coining the term ‘agribusiness’. This paper discusses the contributions of the two scholars to the development of agribusiness as a concept.

Considering the increasing global demand of seaweeds due to its various uses in the manufacturing industries and the country’s attempt to take advantage of our tropical waters, the study examined the existing value chain of seaweeds in the coastal province of Davao Oriental.

The study followed the recommendation of many authors for value chain about combining quantitative and qualitative methods in order to address its complex nature. Thus, a personal interview survey was made to gather data. Point of entry in tracing the chain were the growers located in Kinablangan, Baganga, Mamali, City of Mati, and Maputi, Banaybanay.

It was found out by backward tracing that most of the input are from government agencies while forward tracing leads to traders and processors. Majority of the existing chain is of the fresh seaweeds without champion buyers. The only processing that happens within Davao Oriental is only for fresh seaweeds as food. Dried seaweeds can only get to processors outside the province through the link of DTI and rarely by the growers themselves. Growers have very little cost for production, traders have the greatest share of profit, while processors have the greatest cost and revenue yet least profit.

A number of issues had been identified with the following as more crucial: ice-ice disease that kills especially the seaweed for compound extraction; lack of organization and cooperation among growers and less involvement of government agencies.

In conclusion, the existing seaweed value chain in Davao Oriental is mainly for fresh seaweeds. In regards to dried seaweeds which is of more value globally, the chain performs lowly, struggling to remain in existence. Chain governance is weak as key players are more independent of each other.

The present study was designed to perceive the general information, management system, cost-return and problems of rearing dairy cattle by a sole proprietorship small-scale dairy operation, LRL Khan Dairy Farm Ltd. of Rangamati Hill Tract. With this view, the experiential data were collected with the help of a structured pre-tested questionnaire prepared for the study through face to face interviewing and personal visit to a commercial small scale dairy farm. The Housing, feeding, breeding and other management system were investigated and cost-return of the farm was analyzed. The study revealed that the farm used an open-sided brick floor shed for housing the cattle. The main livestock feed was raw grass, untreated rice straw and concentrated feed. The average dry period, calving interval and services per conception of the cows were 97.3 days, 418 days and 2.97 respectively. The average milk production was 10 litre/cow/day. The highest cost of production was on feed cost which accounts for more than 63%. The gross return of the farm stood at BDT 1,053,000. The highest share of return (74.89%) was obtained from milk production followed by change in inventory (24.06%). The return on investment of the farm was about 34%. The main problems faced by the dairy owner were non-availability of veterinarians and AI services in the locality, shortage of medicine and vaccines in veterinary hospital and ineffectiveness of artificial insemination from the veterinary hospitals. In conclusion, it can be said that small-scale dairy would be a profitable business operation if the problem faced by the farmer can be mitigated.

The broad objective of the study was to estimate the wheat supply function in Zimbabwe using the Nerlovian function. The theoretical framework asserts that the wheat supply is a function of wheat own price, price of inputs like fertilizer,  exchange rates, world wheat prices, area under cultivation, rainfall received and dollarization as a dummy variable. Regression analysis was used to estimate the aggregate the wheat supply function. Economic theory states that wheat supply is affected by pricing factors, institutional factors such as technological level and area under wheat cultivation, macroeconomic factors like exchange rates and dollarization and external factors such as world wheat prices.
The Nerlovian supply function was specified and estimated using the Ordinary Least Squares method. The specified model had an R square adjusted of 0.60 which means the independent variables had 60% explanatory power of the variations in wheat supply. Wheat price elasticity of supply was inelastic in both the short run and long run. The world prices elasticity of supply was inelastic. Exchange rates, dollarization which was an autonomous variable and rainfall received elasticities of supply which were elastic. Exchange rates, world prices, dollarization and rainfall received were significant in explaining the variations in wheat supply in Zimbabwe.
Recommendations were made to the government on policies that shifts the wheat supply function in the long run. Some policies on dollarization were recommended in the short run that can shift the wheat supply function which include the introduction of bond notes to mitigate the issues of liquidity crisis.

The study was conducted at chipoka EPA, T/A Ndindi Salima. 36 smallholder cotton farmers were interviewed, and 3 Ginners were also interviewed. Statistical package for social science was used to analyse for frequencies i.e. farmer compliance to agronomic practices and cotton value chain information flow bottlenecks. The results showed that many farmers do not follow all agronomic practices and they do not practice them as recommended. And it was also found out that they was improper dissemination of information from both side thus from the producers to the ginners and the other way round.
The study established standard practices and processes for quality cotton produce and determined the extent of the smallholder farmer’s compliance to the practices, which was found that the farmers lucked proper addressing of the most critical issues in cotton production. Post-harvest management practices were looked at where farmers did not grade there cotton because the price they received for graded and ungraded was the same. The farmers stored their cotton for anticipation for better prices and they packaged the cotton in poly packs. As such raw cotton produce quality attributes are not addressed appropriately by the smallholder farmers.
Despite all these problems there still is potential for competitive good cotton quality on the market if the farmers have enough inputs and information flow among the players is improved. The study recommends that farmer inputs be provided in time so that farmers carry out their operations timely, secondly access to market information be improved and lastly government should subsidize cotton production inputs so that farmers have in enough inputs for their cotton production.

Bangladesh is principally an agricultural based country dominated by crop production. In Bangladesh onion mostly use for species which gives aroma taste and flavor to the food materials. The present study was designed to measure supply chain analysis of onion markets and to estimate the value addition of onion in selected areas of two upazilas of Pabna district. Primary data were collected from the onion growing area of Sujanagar upazila and Santhiya upazila under Pabna district. Twenty farmers and fifty traders were selected through purposive sampling and simple random sampling procedure. Simple descriptive methods were used to analyze the data. The major findings of the study reveal that onion production is profitable. In the production and marketing system of Onion, many supply chain actors were involved such as Faria, Bepari, Arathdar, wholesaler and retailer. Marketing of onion produced in Sujanagar and Santhiya upazila was moved from the hands of producers to the hands of consumers through six separate chains. The highest sales price per 40Kg of onion Research in Business and Management ISSN 2330-8362 2019, Vol.6, No.2 rbm.macrothink.org 2 received by retailer was Tk. 1625 and the lowest sales price received by farmer was Tk. 1190. In value chain, highest value (29.14 percent) was added by farmer and lowest value (3.97 percent) was added by Arathder of the total value addition. Farmers had the highest proportion of net marketing margin which was about 42.51 percent of total net marketing margin. Retailers had the second highest portion of net marketing margin of onion. On the contrary, Arathdar had the lowest net marketing margin of onion which was only 3.82 percent of total net marketing margin of onion. The study also identified some problems and constraints faced by the onion farmers and trader suggested some recommendations to improve the present production and marketing situation so that per hectare yield of onion and marketing facilities would possibly be increased.

This paper will analyze the purchasing function of my Supply Chain Department within the Yemen Business Unit of Occidental Oil and Gas (Oxy) since it meets the requirement of the assignment statement.  Oxy is the operator of various oilfield concessions in Yemen and an asset of the global corporation Occidental Oil and Gas, which is specialized in the upstream oil and gas exploration and production.  In consideration of the contention, I will try to evaluate the position of the purchasing function in Oxy and build a case to having the function more strategic and adequately aligned to the overall business unit competitive strategy supported by a thorough review of the literature.  Oxy integrated its supply chain management to all operating units back in 2006 as part of a steering team committee decision and a major reshuffle in its leadership.  This paper is devised into three parts:
1- Global Trends Driving Changes in Procurement Practices
2- Competencies for Organization and SS Professionals
3- Transitioning to SS process

Aceh Tengah Regency is a center of coffee production, especially arabica. Coffee plantations in Central Aceh Regency are dominated by smallholder plantations. The total area of Coffee plantation in Aceh Tengah in 2016 is 48,701 Ha and its production is 31,375 tons / year. The purpose of this study is to map the arabica coffee supply chain and find out the optimal amount of raw material inventory in the Oro Coffee Gayo industry. Location of research was in Aceh Tengah Regency at Oro Coffee Gayo. The research method is a case study, with analytical methods using EOQ (Economic Order Quantity), TIC (Total Inventory Cost), Safety Stock and Reorder Points (ROP). The results of the study were obtained 10 locations of Arabica coffee suppliers from 3 sub-districts from Aceh Tengah and Bener Meriah Regencies. The inventory of Oroo Gayo raw materials is not optimal, namely 154,000 kg at the beginning of the year, while the optimal inventory of EOQ results is 134,749.10 kg, meaning that Oro Coffee Gayo purchases raw materials more than the optimal purchase limit. Oro Coffee Gayo must have at least 18,671.50 Kg of coffee raw material for storage. Oro Coffee Gayo can do Reorder points when the raw material reaches 36,592 Kg in the warehouse

Abstract
This research aims to find out the role of Toko Tani Indonesia (TTI) or Toko Tani Indonesia in the supply chain and the establishment of rice price in Sragen District. The basic methods used in this research are descriptive and analytical. The results show that rice supply chain in Sragen is drastically shortened from 6-7 stages to only 3.  Calculation of supply chain performance for marketing efficiency obtained from marketing margin in the first part, namely partner farmers and LUPM of Rp 1,600 and the second part plus TTI of Rp 300 shows a small and rational value, then the value of farmer's share of 51.13%. This study explains that the calculation of asset management efficiency in the form of inventory turnover measurement as much as 12 times, then the value of inventory days of supply in LUPM of 30 days, and cash to cash cycle time for 37 days. Value-added analysis value of each member of the supply chain revealed that farmers contributed 72 percent out of the total value with amount of IDR 376,216,168; LUPM contribution was 26 percent (IDR 136,678,955), and TTI 2 percent (IDR 8,090,000). TTI has helped farmers to guarantee grain production and to buy the grain at the appropriate price. They also play vital role for the community, that is to assure the availability of rice and to maintain the price stability.

Keywords: LUPM, Price, Rice, Supply Chain, TTI

IT WILL WORK ANYWHERE TO TRANSFORM ALL AGRICULTURAL LANDS INTO ORGANIC VIA ALCHEMICAL TRANSMUTATION OF THE POISONOUS AG ADDITIVES FROM MONSANTO AND THE LIKE.  FUNNY ALL OF THE YEARS OF WORK THAT THEY HAVE DONE CAN BE CANCELED IN A FEW MONTHS VIA SPREADING THIS TECH WORLDWIDE.

Because of the rapid expansion of digital and online 'bizscapes,' and 'bizapps' resulting in small and medium-scale agribusinesses adopting and using online entrepreneurial technology innovations, information and communication technology has great potential to enhance the performance and efficiency of agribusinesses. The urge to understand factors that affect information technology innovations adoption and use by small and medium agribusinesses prompted this study, which involves the designing of a modified research model based on UTAUT perspective to determine the influence of cognitive, management characteristics and organizational structure factors on technology adoption. Factor analysis yielded a fit structural model, which was used to test the hypotheses. The study found performance expectancy, SMEs management creativity and innovativeness and SMEs organizational size significantly influence technology innovations use. This paper concludes that performance expec...

This document summarizes research supporting the implementation of blockchain technology in the food and agriculture industry in Ontario. First, our research indicates that blockchain technology based solutions are an existing and proven set of technologies, where it has already been proven that the source of food items can be identified in seconds where previous processes required days and weeks of effort. Second, we also describe how blockchain based supply chain provenance information has many more benefits than its current use for food safety and product recalls. Consumers are willing to pay premium prices for food based on reliable supply chain information that matches the consumers expectations and values.  Costs related to blockchain technology based solution development and implementation will be relatively small in comparison to revenues generated through increased market share by organizations providing useful information to consumers, and other stakeholders in the food supply chain.  Third, we recommend that costs for development of blockchain based solutions should also be distributed across stakeholders, and apportioned by the relevant industry associations. Implementation of smart contracts can be used to guarantee a pre-arranged distribution of revenues and costs across stakeholders across the food supply chain. A consortium approach will reduce individual organization related risks, and will ensure that complete end to end supply chains participate in blockchain based technology solutions. Our research indicates that adoption of blockchain technology in agriculture will be achieve critical mass earlier when the industry applies a consortium approach, in a regulatory environment that is supported by government. Finally, this report also makes recommendations relevant to the integration of blockchain technology with per item labelling, one of the core competencies and strengths of the project partner, Accu-Label Inc.

Instead of each organization attempting to navigate their own path through the different choices in technologies, we recommend a consortium approach where a blockchain technology based solution is selected and implemented through existing industry associations. Industry associations by design address the needs of their members, and therefore have a built-in relationship of trust with their members. This preexisting trust between industry associations and their members will enable pre-arranged distribution of costs and revenues related to implementation of blockchain technology between different stakeholders. Industry associations can pilot simpler low cost blockchain based solutions to reduce the risks developing more complex and expensive solutions.  Blockchain based smart contracts provide an additional layer of assurance by pre-defining conditions of revenue/cost distribution, and automating the process.

Summary of Recommendations
1. Pilot different blockchain technologies to determine the best fit for the industry and organization.
2. Determine information that is of value to stakeholders in the supply chain, such as end consumers, and that they are willing to pay for.
3. Distribute the costs of blockchain technology development across different stakeholders in a consortium approach through industry associations.
4. Ensure that a robust mechanism exists to bridge information flows with physical food product flows.

Part 1 of this report provides a baseline mapping study of Indonesia-China sustainable palm oil linkages.
The linkages are investigated from several angles, from an overview of the trade relationship between
Indonesia and China to a summary of key companies importing and exporting palm oil. The purpose of
the report is to provide a comprehensive but concise overview of the relationship and stakeholders
involved in the Indonesia-China trade of palm oil products. The study also includes an assessment of
environmental and social risk areas as well as a summary of sustainability initiatives undertaken by
Indonesia’s largest plantation companies. In reviewing Chinese players in palm oil, some significant
investors were identified; but the evidence points to stepwise progress, and the loss of large-scale
investment ambitions. The study should serve as an important starting point for future research into
more in-depth, location-specific linkages between Indonesia and China.
Part 2 of the report provides a deeper look into specific issues, including gender in palm oil, China trade issues and deals, and updates on Trase data for 2018.

The quality and continuity of cocoa beans supply
is determined really stakeholders in related to the cocoa
supply chain. In general, the activity of cocoa beans
production has not been efficient yet to compete as raw
materials for domestic and foreign industries. In order for
cocoa commodities in West Sulawesi Province can compete
and increase the income of cocoa farmers, so it is necessary
to increase the role of main stakeholders and to support the
cocoa supply chain especially those support the
improvement of cocoa beans productivity. The objective of
study is to analyse the position and role of stakeholder in the
cocoa bean supply chain. The method used to identify the
stakeholders’ position / structure is Interpretative Structural
Modelling (ISM) method, and the role of stakeholders by
survey method is to identify the cocoa bean supply chain that
becomes the object of research. The results of the study
indicate that famers are the most important stakeholders
who need to get the attention of other stakeholders in the
sustainability of the cocoa supply chain. Marketing
institutions (collectors, wholesalers, processing industries,
exporters), government / agricultural extension workers, still
have few roles in the supply chain of cocoa commodities. The
roles as expected of marketing institutions are partnership
especially price guarantees and costs support of increasing
farmers' garden productivity. The expected roles of
governmental extension institution, Non Governmental
Organization, college, and banking are to improve the
knowledge of farming management through intensive
assistance and the capital fulfilment of farmer through soft
loan facility, also determining the basic price (minimum
price) of cocoa bean among actors who is regulated for and
controlled by government.

This publication captures and profiles the portfolio of biodiversity-based products, commodities and community experiences pertaining to the sustainable use, marketing and certification of biodiversity. The catalogue of biodiversity-based products from SGP's Latin American & Caribbean portfolio demonstrates the linkage between the sustainable use of biodiversity, community empowerment and poverty reduction.

Agriculture has been the target of modernisation for a long time. The earlier interventions of deploying the ‘green revolution’ technologies were a statist project and aimed at increasing productivity. The focus of public policy has shifted from increasing productivity to finding and servicing consumer markets. It is in this context that contract farming and linkages with formal retail sector have been proposed.

The erstwhile Left Front government in West Bengal, India had drafted the management consultancy firm McKinsey & Company to strategize a rejuvenation plan for the state’s agriculture. McKinsey suggested that the government should encourage farmers to enter into contract farming, which would allow them to access market, especially the international and domestic metropolitan markets. The documents produced by McKinsey were confidential, but those have been recently leaked. In this paper, I analyse these confidential documents and the proposal to transform agriculture into agribusiness. I try to locate such a proposal at the global level to understand the dynamics of (global) agribusiness and why global agri-capital advocates contract farming. Thereafter, I try to critically evaluate the prospect of contract farming in Bengal and India.

The Agribusiness System of Virginia Tobacco in Argentina is in a market experiencing great changes in the past few years. The leading world consumption countries find it decreasing progressively while the new economies, mainly China, have taken a leading role in this matter. These changes also reflect in world tobacco production, with new countries occupying leading roles.  The sum of these opportunities and threats have, and will have, great impact in northern provinces of Argentina, where the growth and process of Virginia tobacco has a preponderant share in the economy. The objective of this thesis is to determine the competitiveness of the AGS (Agribusiness System) of Virginia tobacco in Argentina. To achieve this the method of "Study and Strategic Planning of AGS (EPESA) was used, based on the methodological combination of the Chain Approach and the GESIS method. The result of the analysis determined that the major transactions that characterize and define the competitiveness of AGS have high transaction costs. These disadvantages found in the major transactions of the AGS, generate high transaction costs, lack of predictability, uncertainty, lack of specialization, low productivity, and therefore, lack of competitiveness.

Key words: Agribusiness system, Virginia tobacco, EPESA GESis method, transaction costs, productivity, competitiveness, institutional environment, tobacco multinationals, specialization.

The “Volga Region” is an historical land inside the Russian Federation that includes territories adjacent to the flow of the Volga River. The Autonomous Republic of Tatarstan is the ancient, original region, possessing a unique culture in what place, east, western traditions and idioms are shared, and it is placed in the middle of the Volga Region. Kazan is the capital of Tatarstan, a modern and visionary town, where it will be possible to design and develop an advanced and innovative agribusiness infrastructure and where to introduce the concept of "Hub" in the housing and in the distribution of food. The main concepts exploited in this project are modularity, standardization and use of ICT facilities. The module will be the pallet, the standard the Euro Pallet and the warehouse class A and, as regards ICT devices, the RFID equipment and the satellite control.

The paper presents a plan that drive transformation in agriculture and
ultimately the food sector in Nepal. The academia have constructed a socioeconomic mechanism that mobilizes the available natural resources in a sustainable and organize way to guarantee the food security of the entire country. It defines the plan purpose of “re-organizing the production segment and modernizing the food market” with creative institutional practice in Public Private PPP Model, formation of multidisciplinary stakeholders' network and applied technologies.

The bottom line of the plan is to make substantial increases in involved member’s quality of life by effectively increasing their incomes. For which it rely on market driven production approach. It means to prioritize more on market analyzes sales data and global consumption trends and import data, rather than the existing cropping practices

La tesis profundiza en los fundamentos teórico-metodológicos de los enfoques tipológico y agroindustrial para el estudio de la organización territorial de la economía ganadera vacuna en las condiciones concretas de Cuba, a partir de la valoración de los principales antecedentes, posiciones teóricas y tendencias de investigación a nivel mundial y el análisis histórico-espacial del proceso de asimilación de los territorios ganaderos en el país. Se propone el enfoque tipológico para el estudio y aproximación a escala nacional, adecuando las variables tipológicas, el procesamiento estadístico-matemático de matrices numéricas y el análisis de cluster para la definición de los tipos antes del Periodo Especial, llegándose a una caracterización y diferenciación de los mismos. Se aborda el comportamiento y la estructura territorial de la economía ganadera vacuna a través de un enfoque agroindustrial, proponiéndose un procedimiento metodológico en el cual se combinan el uso de varios métodos geográficos, a diferentes escalas y niveles de agregación de los agentes regionales que conforman la economía ganadera vacuna. Finalmente, se presenta un modelo teórico-espacio-funcional que generaliza y sintetiza las principales regularidades en la articulación espacial de dicha economía, sugiriendo la incorporación del criterio espacial en la estrategia de desarrollo de esta actividad mediante dos acciones territoriales.

From the 1990s the Italian agribusiness sector is increasingly threatened by a new and dangerous phenomenon: organized crime in the agribusiness sector. The so-called "Agromafia" imposes its control throughout the whole agricultural supply chain, from production to retail, passing through the processing industry, transports and large-scale distribution. In this paper we examine the relationship between eco-crimes and consumer food and non-alcoholic drinks price index for the 20 Italian regions and 80 Italian provinces in the 1998-2016 period. At regional level, as a proxy for the Agromafia's activities, we build an ad hoc eco-criminal index for every region using data annually elaborated from Legambiente. At province level, as a proxy for Agromafia's activities, we use eight specific variables: extortions, counterfeiting, contraband, forest fires, all types of fires, money laundering, suspicious money transfers, and an ad hoc eco-criminal index. The analysis shows that the Agromafia can consistently affect the whole agribusiness sector, causing an increase in food prices, especially in south of the country. The ten most affected provinces by phenomenon register a food consumer price index about 12% higher than the least ten affected provinces. By the contrast, in the center-north of Italy money laundering seems to reduce food consumer prices through the reinvestment of illicit proceeds in firms with strong cost advantages.

Starting from the analogy of gravitational forces to explain the volume of bilateral
trade, the Gravity model has become a very popular model in international trade research. The
Gravity Model has also been widely developed by adding various independent variables.
Instead to measuring trading volume and various factors that influence the volume of trade,
there is not much utilization of the gravity model to measure trade potential. This research is
intended to implement a gravity model to measure the potential of Indonesian fruit trade. The
measurement of trade potential is carried out by using data on the three main group of
Indonesian exported fruits (based on 6 digits HS Code) which traded in 16 years. The classical
gravity model, employed in this research contains independent variables, such as the amount of
tariffs, the existence of free trade agreements, population, GNP of each country, distance and
share of trade. The method of analysis used refers to the gravity model applied by Susanto, et
al (2007) and regression analysis method applied by Arita et al (2014). Since its easily fits
with some important stylized facts, it is easy to use real data, and also easily estimates using
Ordinary Least Square (OLS), the Gravity Model can be a comprehensive instrument for
managing big data to present rapid and dynamic estimates of international trade in line with the
demands of the Revolution Industry 4.0.

Interest in analysing agri-food supply chains, has grown tremendously in the last decade because of the importance of food in well-being, an increasing globalisation of the food industry and as a result agri-food chains increased in complexity. The complexity also results from the perishable nature of food products, seasonality and the risks inherent in the production systems. In a developing country like Indonesia, these complexities are heightened but a further factor can be added-traditional culture plays an important role in almost every aspect of business activities. Agri-food supply chains are highly organised social systems, which have the objective of efficiently matching consumer demand with product supply. The importance of social factors such as cooperation, trust and relationships suggest that Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) has some potential for exploring improvements to agri-food supply chains. This paper reports on an application of SSM to improve agri-food supply chain performance for dryland farming products from small-scale farmers in Lombok, Indonesia. Some possible future research opportunities are also explored.

"Vancouver’s Ethical Purchasing Policy: A Participatory Public Policy Process

Highlights and Key Findings:

• This chapter is an analytic narrative of how Vancouver’s Ethical Purchasing Policy was written. This empirically grounded policy story offers a practical example for others to follow.
• A municipal Ethical Purchasing Policy is one way local communities can contribute to ethical trade efforts aimed at avoiding tragedies like the 24 April 2013 garment factory collapse in Savar, Bangladesh, that killed 1,129 workers.
• Vancouver’s Ethical Purchasing Policy was written by a city task force comprising two city councilors, two city managers, and representatives of several businesses, unions, and civil society organizations with expertise on international labour standards, Fair Trade certification, and ethical purchasing of global commodities.
• Participation by city managers was key because policies solely crafted by city council might not take into account the practicalities of implementing a new policy while still following existing policies. Including city managers led to successful implementation and ensured the policy saved the city money.
• Participation by community members lent legitimacy to the city’s policy and helped ensure that the policy met international ethical trade norms for union-made garments and Fair Trade certified agricultural commodities including coffee, tea, and chocolate.

On 17 February 2005, Vancouver became the first Canadian municipality to adopt an Ethical Purchasing Policy (EPP) pertaining to union-made garments and Fair Trade certified coffee, tea, and chocolate. The EPP was crafted with a high level of participation by businesses, unions, and civil society organizations. The policy’s social justice ethos stands out in an ongoing era of neoliberal retrenchment of progressive public policies. Other Canadian cities, such as Calgary, Alberta, have since followed Vancouver’s lead in ethical purchasing. Vancouver’s EPP was written by a city task force that included two city councilors, two city managers, and representatives of several businesses, unions, and civil society organizations with expertise on international labour standards, Fair Trade certification, and ethical procurement through global commodity chains. This chapter is an institutional ethnography that focuses on the policy writing process and the standardized processes that comprise public participation, public decision-making, and public administration.

The chapter is empirically grounded in seven semi-structured interviews of 30 to 150 minutes in length with the two city councilors that chaired the policy writing process, two city managers (interviewed a second time together) that oversaw the implementation of the process, one of which participated in writing the policy, and a Fair Trade activist and a union organizer that participated in the writing process. These interviews were complemented with participant observation and textual analysis. Participant observation was conducted both in real-time in activist meetings and in city council meetings and reflexively from my experience as a Canadian Fair Trade activist-researcher. The interviews and observational work helped identify key texts for analysis, including the EPP and the connected Supplier Code of Conduct (SCC), council meeting minutes, minutes of standing committees of council, reports to council by city managers, and a critical analysis of the policy written by the Maquila Solidarity Network, a Toronto-based anti-sweatshop advocacy group. The research took place from January 2006 to August 2007 as part of a larger study in which I was involved alongside sociologist Dorothy E. Smith for a community-university research alliance called "Rural Women Making Change."

The Hope University Graduate School’s Regulations, Research Proposals for post-graduate Diplomas should not less than 15 pages; those for Masters should not have more than 25 pages and those for PhDs should not have more than 35 pages. References are for Postgraduate Diploma and Masters, whereas Bibliography is for PhDs. In all cases, the writing is one and half-spacing font 12 in Times New Roman. On an A4 page, with page numbers in the bottom margin right aligned.  The candidate should submit five spiral bound copies to the vetting committee.

The incidences of hunger and poverty in the country are stubbornly high. About one-fifth of our population, about 230 million, is hungry and undernourished, accounting for about one-fourth of the world’s food insecure people. The situation is further aggravated with the fast changing climate, the shrinking land and water resources, and the rising food prices particularly in the cities.

Small farmers’ participation in global value chains is of
prime importance for inclusive agricultural development
in developing countries like India. However, the issue of
inclusiveness of modern arrangements like contract
farming and the determinants of participation in such
arrangements is understudied in such contexts. This
paper examines the issue of small farmers’ participation
in contract farming arrangements in Punjab, where
farming is dominated by medium and relatively large
farms. Based on a sample of contract and non-contract
farmers, this paper examines the relationship between
the farmers’ resourcefulness and contract farming
participation, selectivity bias, and its impact on farm
income. It finds that the contract and the non-contract
farmers differ in terms of education, agricultural
machinery ownership, and owned and operational
landholdings. Small farmers are not, by and large, part of
contract farming practice in the studied crops and the
selectivity bias exists in contract farming; however, it
does not have any significant impact on farm income.
Small farmers’ participation can be improved through
better institutional mechanisms, including group
contracts and incentives for contracting agencies to
work with small farmers.

The high cost of operation and severe competition in the agri-food e-commerce market make it hard for the small and medium agri-food enterprises (A-SMEs) to operate cost-efficiently and in a sustainable manner. This paper seeks to organize A-SMEs to develop a cooperative organization via collaborative strategies and alliance structures, named as the home-delivery-oriented agri-food supply chain (HASC) alliance, to form a substantive relationship to gain a stable foothold in the emerging e-commerce market. A theoretical framework of the HASC alliance is built with its organizational structure and schematics of the process of implementation strategies that cover the aspects of last-mile chain extension, food transportation, and production/distribution control. Furthermore, a three-step analytical method is proposed to analyze the performance of the alliance with the aim to provide appropriate strategies to hedge against the potential risks of cooperation instability. A hypothetical case is conducted, and the results show that: (1) the performance of the hypothetical HASC alliance with time shows significant variation in the beginning, but it gains stability with the application of stability control strategies; (2) the cooperation stability of HASC alliance is very sensitive to the performance of the strategies that control the customer and environment variations; (3) the factors of trust and market fluctuation have higher effects on membership and environmental stability, respectively; (4) the minimum and maximum cost ranges of control strategies at which the alliance can maintain its stability and performance are 5% and 29%, respectively, of the total operation cost.

Overview
As part of Elsevier’s new series on Consumer Science and Strategic Marketing (Series Editors: Alessio Cavicchi and Cristina Santini), this new volume aims to highlight key aspects of food retailing and distribution across the globe.

The collection of case studies will highlight how, in a dynamic and fast-moving sector, organizations are responding to current trends (e.g. food provenance, health concerns, climate change, the concentration of retail power, retail internationalization, homogeneity, glocalization, technological advances) and the consequences of these for the consumer.

The book will consist of a series of case studies organized by theme. The exact themes will depend on the accepted submissions, but the following provides an outline indication of potential topics:

Food retailing and distribution
• Retail food pricing decisions and the potential implications of this for consumer choices and consumer health (see, for example, Steenhuis et al., 2011).
• Communications and promotion in food retailing (see, for example, Peattie, 1998).
• Supply chain management and logistics in the food, including more recent developments such as online and ominchannel food retailing (Ramus & Asger Nielsen, 2005) and associated ‘last mile’ challenges (Hübner et al., 2016).
• Informal food distribution networks such as street vending, Dabbawala-like distribution systems (Baindur & Macário, 2013), alternative food networks and alliances (Jarosz, 2008), and food banks (Loopstra et al., 2015).

Consumer perspectives
• Consumer loyalty in food retailing (Møller Jensen, 2011).
• Consumer trust and satisfaction, especially areas of consumer focus such as slow-food (Jones et al., 2003), food provenance and safety (Morgan et al., 2008), and food ethics (Schröder & McEachern, 2004).
• Consumer responses to the growth of niche specialist food retailers (McGuinness & Hutchinson, 2013).

The role of place in food retailing and distribution
• Rural and urban food retailing provision (see, for example, Byrom et al., 2001; Cummins & Macintyre, 2002).
• Food retailing in secondary shopping areas
• Food retailing as a means of urban regeneration and place-making (see, for example, Wrigley et al., 2002).
• Traditional food markets
• Food retailing and distribution in developed vs. emerging national economic contexts (see, for example, Ali et al., 2010).

This is not an exhaustive list and interested authors are invited to propose chapters which lie outside the areas above, but which lie firmly rooted within the remit of food retailing and distribution.

Submissions from both an organizational and a consumer perspective are invited. Given the scope of the book, and in line with the objectives of the series, the implications of each case study for consumers and/or organizational strategy should be emphasized by authors – either by having an explicit focus on these issues throughout the chapter, or by including a dedicated ‘implications for consumers’ sub-section towards the end of the chapter. Authors may choose to focus on a particular geographic scale: local, regional, national, or continental; depending on the nature of the case.

Chapter length: 4,000 words maximum.

Presented at the first annual symposium of rural management at Xaviers Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar on November 9th 2012. Presents some experimental findings and theorises some action hypothesis, for developing a cow based economy - in the present ecological, economic and social context of the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand state.

Despite the fact that contracting facilitates farmer participation in agrifood value chains, evidence on farmers' participation in different forms of contracts and the impact on farm performance is still limited. This study examines the determinants and impacts of vertical coordination mechanism-spot market transactions, written, and verbal contracton-farm performance of rice farmers in northern Ghana, using a multinomial BFG model to account for selectivity bias. The findings indicate that vertical coordination participation decision is significantly influenced by age, access to credit, labor, association membership, and sales to institutional buyers. The empirical results also reveal significant gains in farm performance outcomes from participating in written and verbal contracts, relative to spot market transactions.

This article is an empirical analysis of contract farming (CF) practice in Punjab. The findings are based on the primary survey of three districts covering 300 contract farmers. The companies are found to be exploitative, which is apparent with the trends of agribusiness normalisation, such as, default in procurement, low prices and lack of extension services. CF, however, has induced a level of satisfaction among the farmers with good experiences in the past. Farmers are willing to continue with the CF in the future, provided the government plays a stringent role by enforcing a strong legal framework.

This study aimed to determine the model of slaughterhouse management for better competitiveness in producing hot meat products according to customer demand in respect to animal
welfare in West Java. This study was conducted in two phases, the first year study in 2013 was to investigate slaughterhouses under governmental services and the second year study in 2014 was to examine the best slaughterhouses based on the results of research in the first year, to establish competitive slaughterhouse management. A survey method in 13 cities or regencies in West Java was used in the first year while an explorative study in the two selected slaughterhouses was used in the second year. The results showed that (1) most of the slaughterhouses were not and less feasible. This was due to some technical requirements and the procedures that were inconsistent with regulation from the Indonesian Minister of Agriculture and Indonesian national standard. There were only two feasible slaughterhouses with more than 80% scores but still need infrastructure and management improvement to be more competitive. (2) Slaughterhouse competitive management
model respects to animal welfare and produces 'hot meat' products which was under the Good Slaughtering Practices by slaughtering cattle with or without stunning procedures.

Key words: Slaughterhouse management, competitive, standardization, and Animal welfare

This book provides further understanding on the influence of human resource demographic characteristics on business firms’ technology innovations adoption by investigating the moderating role of age, gender and prior ICT use experience on small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs’) ICT use behavior. SMEs constitute most of businesses in most countries, and contribute immensely to socio-economic development. Hence, to achieve rapid and better business growth, firms need to discard the crude ways of running business, lay off unskilled labour and embrace modern business innovations driven by ICT and hire the relevant category of workers (based on demographic attributes) that have sufficient technology use experience. Using the UTAUT perspective, a survey questionnaire was administered to 400 employees and managers selected using purposive sampling from 43 randomly selected agribusinesses in the State of Selangor, Malaysia. The research found that performance expectancy, which is consistently significant on male workers was found to be significant on female employees, suggesting that female workers may overtake their male counterparts in the use of ICT to performing task-oriented jobs.

The quality and continuity of cocoa beans supply is determined really stakeholders in related to the cocoa supply chain. In general, the activity of cocoa beans production has not been efficient yet to compete as raw materials for domestic and foreign industries. In order for cocoa commodities in West Sulawesi Province can compete and increase the income of cocoa farmers, so it is necessary to increase the role of main stakeholders and to support the cocoa supply chain especially those support the improvement of cocoa beans productivity. The objective of study is to analyse the position and role of stakeholder in the cocoa bean supply chain. The method used to identify the stakeholders’ position / structure is Interpretative Structural Modelling (ISM) method, and the role of stakeholders by survey method is to identify the cocoa bean supply chain that becomes the object of research. The results of the study indicate that famers are the most important stakeholders who need to get the...