Location determinants of food manufacturers in the United States, 2000–2004: are nonmetropolitan counties competitive?

Infrastructure, agglomeration, product and input markets, fiscal attributes, and labor markets of local communities influenced food manufacturing location decisions in the lower 48 United States, 2000–2004. Negative binomial regression and spatial clustering methods forecast food processor location patterns at the county level. Noncore counties are at a comparative disadvantage with respect to attracting most food processors, but nonmetropolitan counties adjacent to urban areas may be attractive investment sites for footloose, supply, and demand-oriented food manufacturers.     

ASDA: Organic Growth of a Retailer in the United Kingdom?

This article analyzes the role of glocalization in Wal-Mart's venture in the United Kingdom. In 1999, Wal-Mart acquired ASDA, a British food retailer. Glocalization refers to strategies adopted by multinational corporations to cater to local tastes and differences after entering a foreign market. The authors' main argument is the following: after Wal-Mart acquired ASDA, it did not manage to successfully impose its Wal-Martization strategies because they consisted mainly of “organic growth” strategies. Organic growth is a practice whereby a corporation overpoweringly imposes its home-based blueprint of product consumption and corporate culture on foreign cultures. As demonstrated in this analysis, Wal-Mart had to drop its Bentonville-based shopping and corporate formula and, instead, adopt the principles of glocalization.     

Economic performance in Latin America in the 2000s: recession,recovery, and resilience?

This paper examines Latin America’s economic performance in the last three decades with the objective of assessing whether it entered a new phase of strong and persistent growth with stabilization in the 2000s. Our analysis pays special attention to the changing roles of exports and investment as drivers of growth and to the region’s performance in the fiscal area, the composition and dynamics of foreign trade, investment and labour productivity. Our results indicate that, in general, the region has achieved important progress in macroeconomic matters, but it has failed to overcome major structural, long-term constraints linked to its balance of payments and to a lesser extent its fiscal performance. Unless these challenges are resolved, the region’s long-term growth will hardly be favourable.     

Situating community forestry enterprises within New Institutional Economic theory: What are the implications for their organization?

Community forestry enterprises (CFEs) have gained considerable traction with rural development and forestry practitioners as models for community development, poverty alleviation, and conservation. This paper uses New Institutional Economic theory to identify the key organizational features and potential inherent weaknesses of CFEs. NIE theory focuses on arguments of economic efficiency, specifically transaction cost reductions that serve as incentives for collective action by groups of owners. Examples are given to show how the organization of CFEs reduced transaction costs stemming from interactions with industrial loggers and service providers. However, the creation of these community enterprises goes beyond simple transaction cost reductions and economic justifications. Additional unquantifiable benefits, such as self-determination, control over resources that communities have historically used, application of acquired skills, political representation, and application of acquired skills to name a few, are also secured through community ownership. These benefits however do not come without a cost. As enterprises where ownership rights are incomplete or ill-defined and which do not operate with the incentives of investor-owned firms, CFEs have little to no initial capital pool and experience considerable investment limitations due to limited wealth, horizon problems, and unsolved issues with moral hazard vis-à-vis banks. CFEs also face important management and collective decision-making challenges. In spite of their institutional weaknesses, it is apparent that many societies have decided that the benefits of community ownership far outweigh their ownership costs. State intervention and policy have played an important role in building the necessary supportive framework for the development of these enterprises. NIE as a dominant model for understanding alternative entrepreneurial forms was useful for identifying some important aspects of CFEs that, in a profit-driven economy, can constitute weaknesses that place them at a disadvantage with investor-owned firms. This analysis informs where policy should be targeted if CFEs are to be supported and fostered.     

Rice productivity in Bangladesh: What are the benefits of irrigation?

Green Revolution technologies transformed Bangladesh’s agricultural system through the introduction of high-yielding rice and wheat varieties, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and the expansion of tubewell-irrigated area, enabling crop production during the dry season. However, serious challenges continue to plague the agriculture sector, including scarcity of land due to high population density, unbalanced use of fertilizers and pesticides, and great variation in water supply across seasons – from drought to stagnant flood conditions. Further expansion of irrigated area – including through the continued development and improvement of surface water systems – is being eyed by Bangladesh’s Ministry of Agriculture to address many of the remaining challenges facing the country. However, such expansion is not without risks or consequences, and a careful analysis of who benefits from irrigation, and how, must guide development priorities.We examine plot-level data for rice production during Bangladesh’s three rice seasons – aus, boro, and aman – across a nationally-representative household survey in Bangladesh. While rainfall is the most important determinant of rice yield during aus and chemical inputs are most important during aman, access to irrigation has the greatest influence on boro rice yield during the dry season, particularly for the coastal south. The government of Bangladesh is planning massive investments in the southern region for the improved provision of surface water irrigation. The expected decline in groundwater, coupled with our econometric findings, suggests that expanding boro production in the south may not be a good strategy to promote, for the region. Whether brackish shrimp aquaculture can provide an equitable and sustainable livelihood alternative should continue to be a focus of research.     

What role for cooperation in conservation tenders? Paying farmer groups in the High Andes

This paper sheds light on the potential of group-level tenders to enhance conservation where it depends on cooperation of small-scale farmers. We analyze data from two pilot payment for ecosystem service (PES) schemes focused on the conservation of agricultural biodiversity in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes. Contracts were assigned to farming groups who could choose between different types of in-kind payments with varying degrees of divisibility between group members. Our main results indicate that: (1) stronger general patterns of collective action are positively related to the level of cooperation in group-bid making; (2) where collective action is robust, collective payments seem to provide stronger conservation incentives than individual payments; (3) collective payments could mitigate some potential rent-seeking behavior; (4) selecting bid offers based on both a ‘cooperation’ criterion and conservation land area offered does not overly compromise the cost-effectiveness of PES; and (5) group-level contracts may create strong incentives for contract compliance. Hence, combining farmer group-level contracts with collective in-kind payments can enhance the cost-effectiveness of conservation tenders, while generating co-benefits in terms of increased interaction and social capital among group members.     

Planning for Agricultural Change and Economic Transformation in Tanzania?

Recently, Tanzania witnessed a revival of economic planning that explicitly aimed to combine rapid economic growth with accelerated structural transformation of the economy. To achieve these planning targets would require a relatively modest drop in the share of agriculture in GDP, but a dramatic fall in its share in employment by 2025. Tanzanian planners assume that labour is locked in agriculture because agricultural productivity is low, from which they conclude that, to release labour to fuel the expansion of manufacturing, it is imperative to raise agricultural productivity by appropriate land policies, leveraging private investment and developing public–private partnerships. We argue that, analytically, this planning argument leaves out the possibility that causality may run the other way – from high labour retention in agriculture to low agricultural productivity – and that, empirically, the observed patterns inherent in actual processes of economic transformation in Tanzania do not tally well with the assumptions of planners. More specifically, in so far as labour flows out of agriculture, it flows towards informal‐sector activities, both rural and urban, rather than towards formal manufacturing.     

‘Integrated’ Rural Development Policy in the EU: a Team Too Faar?

‘Integrate’ Rural Development Policy in the EU: a Term Too Far? Since its introduction in the early 1980s for Mediterranean and some other regions, an ‘integrated’ approach to EU rural development policy has come to-be increasingly advocated. However, the precise meaning of the term is seldom made clear in official and other documents, which appear to have applied it in a variety of contexts and in a number of different ways, This article discusses and analyses some alternative interpretations of ‘integrated’ rural development policy, including considerations of finance (funding from more than one source), administration (policy design, approval, monitoring and evaluation being undertaken by a single agency), institutions (responsibility and coordination being shared between different departments and agencies) and the economics of efficiency (better balancing of costs and benefits, and the encouragement of desired complementarities). These different meanings may explain some of the confusion in the long-running debate over rural policy in the EU, and suggest the need for more careful language. However, the arguments do endorse the apparent direction of thinking at the November 2003 Salzburg conference on rural development, i.e. that improved policy will result from better defined objectives, a single EU fund for rural development, and territorial programming at a local or regional level. Les politiques européennes de développement rural ‘intégré’:un mot de trop? Depuis l'introduction de ce vocable, au début des années 80, à propos, entre autres, des régions méditerranéennes, il est de plus en plus courant d'entendre vanter les mérites d'une approche ‘intégrée’ des politiques de développement rural. Pourtant, la signification précise de ce terme n'est que rarement explicitée, que ce soit dans les documents officiels ou dans d'autres. Le mot semble avoir été appliquéà de nombreuses situations différentes et de toutes sortes de façons. On essaie id d'analyser les différentes interprétations qu'il est possible de donner à la notion d'intégration des politiques de développement rural, que ce soit en termes de financement (utilisation de plus d'une seule source de financement), d'administration (l'élaboration des politiques, la décision, le suivi, et l'évaluation se trouvant sous la responsabilité d'une agence unique), destitutions (partage des responsabilités et des tâches de coordination entre différents départements ministériels ou agences d'exécution), ou d'efficacitééconomique (meilleur équilibre entre les bénéfices et les coûts, souci de créer des complérnentarités). La polysémie du mot semble expliquer la confusion qui entoure depuis longtemps le débat sur la politique rurale dans l'Union européenne et cela implique la nécessité d'employer un langage plus précis. Aussi bien, ce point correspond à la ligne générale de pensée qui s'est manifestéà la conférence de Salzbourg en novembre 2003 sur le développement rural: pour améliorer la politique, il faut que ses objectifs soient mieux définis, qu'il existe un seul fonds européen pour le développement rural, et que la planification territoriale se fasse au niveau local ou régional. ‘Integrierte’ Politik zur Entwicklung des ländlichen Raums in der EU: Ein zu weit gefasster Begriff? Seitdem der integerierte Ansatz für die Politik zur Entwicklung des ländlichen Raums der EU in den frühen 1980er Jahren für den Mittelmeerraum und andere Regionen eingeführt wurde, wird er zunehmend befürwortet. Die Definition dieses Begriffs geht jedoch selten eindeutig aus amtlichen und anderen Dokumenten hervor, welche diesen Begriff scheinbar auf die verschiedensten Arten und in vielfaltigen Kontexten verwenden. In diesem Beitrag werden einige Alternativen hinsichtlich der Auslegung des Begriffs der “integrierten” Politik zur Entwicklung des ländlichen Raums diskutiert und analysiert. Hierbei werden Finanzierung (Finanzierung aus mehreren Quellen), Verwaltung (Politikentwurf, Zustimmung, Überwachung und Evaluierung durch eine einzige Agentur), Institutionen (gemeinschaftliche Verantwortung und Koordination von verschiedenen Abteilungen und Geschäftsstellen) und Effizienz (verbessertes Abwägen von Kosten und Nutzen sowie Förderung erwünschter Komplementaritäten) behandelt. Diese unterschiedlichen Begriffsinhalte sind möglicherweise ein Grund für die Verwirrung in der seit langem geführten Debatte zur ländlichen Politik in der EU und lassen eine umsichtigere Sprachwahl sinnvoll erscheinen. Die Argumente untermauern jedoch die vorherrschende Meinung auf der Salzburger Konferenz zur Entwicklung des ländlichen Raums im November 2003, d.h. dass klarer definierte Ziele, ein einziger EU-Fonds für die Entwicklung des ländlichen Raums sowie territoriale Programmentwicklung auf lokaler oder regionaler Ebene zu einer verbesserten Politik führen.     

Tempest in the Andes? Part 2: Peasant Organization and Development Agencies in Cotopaxi (Ecuador)

This paper, published in two parts, is an analysis of the links between the ‘agrarian question’ in the Ecuadorian Andes and the creation of a network of indigenous‐peasant organizations that became the backbone of the national indigenous movement. I explore the relations between agrarian change and social change, drawing on a monographic study carried out in Cotopaxi Province, in the central sierra of Ecuador, from the 1960s to the beginning of the twenty‐first century. In the first part, I emphasized how the transformations unleashed by the crisis of the hacienda regime marked a rupture that consolidated the dense organizational scaffolding in the rural milieu. In this second part, I examine how development agencies, especially non‐governmental organizations (NGOs), played a fundamental role in strengthening those structures (1980s and 1990s). The history of the Union of Peasant Organizations of Northern Cotopaxi (UNOCANC) is one such example: born from the struggle for haciendas, inputs from the development apparatus enabled the rise of local elites who turned the organization into one of the most militant in the country. In this paper, I draw attention to aspects seldom mentioned in the specialized bibliography, namely a detailed study of how peasant differentiation, the origins of which lay in hacienda hierarchies, and which was upheld in turn by the agrarian distribution, was accelerated by the actions of NGOs, which continued to favour those indigenous peasants with more power and economic resources. Thus, divergences were consolidated and internal fissures opened up in organizations that are at the root of the crisis of representation experienced by ethnic platforms in the Ecuadorian Andes today.     

Spatial dependence in agricultural land prices: does it exist?

Trade-offs arise between spatial dependence and choice of functional form in agricultural land price hedonic models. We discuss these trade-offs and how they can create spurious spatial dependence. Using a land sales dataset with apparent spatial dependence, we implement a semiparametric approach avoiding potential problems with the functional form. The results show that in addition to being nonlinear, the impacts are also characterized by significance thresholds that are difficult to capture in a parametric model. More importantly, we fail to detect any spatial dependence demonstrating that inappropriate functional form can indeed be responsible for finding spatial dependence in hedonic models.     

Deracializing Exploitation? ‘Black Economic Empowerment’ in the South African Wine Industry

This paper considers the discourse and practice of 'Black Economic Empowerment' (BEE) in the South African wine industry. It argues that far from representing a decisive break with an inequitable past, BEE allows the South African wine industry to avoid potentially more uncomfortable options to redress current and past race-based imbalances – such as land redistribution, import boycotts and better working conditions for grape pickers. An essentialist racial discourse, pivoting on ahistorical and dislocated notions of 'blackness', has been used to displace the transformation agenda away from addressing the conditions faced by workers, and to an ameliorism that allows a small cohort of black entrepreneurs to become the preferred beneficiaries of 'transformation' in the wine industry. The new terrain is characterized by branding, advertising and image building on the one side: and by codes of conduct, a sectoral BEE charter, scorecards and auditing on the other. These allow the standardization, legitimation and ostensible deracialization of exploitative labour and social relations in the South African wine industry.     

What drives innovation in the agricultural sector? A spatial analysis of knowledge spillovers

This article analyses the spatial concentration of agricultural innovation in Ireland. Influenced by the importance of knowledge spillovers, the roles of key innovation drivers are discussed. The analysis reveals a clear spatial concentration of agricultural innovation and while some of this variation can be explained by the spatial concentration of the sector, there are also other factors at play that drive the spatial distribution of innovation. More specifically, the distributions of research, education and advisory services show a similar spatial pattern to agricultural innovation, providing support for the existence of regional knowledge spillovers.     

Does Agriculture Really Matter for Economic Growth in Developing Countries?

This paper revisits the debate on the role of agriculture in promoting economic growth in a selection of nine developing countries. We investigated the causal linkages between agriculture and gross domestic product growth with the aid of directed acyclic graphs, a recently developed algorithm of inductive causation. The results suggest that while agriculture could be an engine of economic growth, the impact varies across countries. In some cases, we found strong evidence in support of the agriculture‐led growth hypothesis. In contrast, the results for some other countries indicate that having a vibrant aggregate economy is a prerequisite for agricultural development.     

Farmers’ perception of their decision-making in relation to policy schemes: A comparison of case studies from Switzerland and the United States

Farmers are decision-makers in a complex system of cause and effect. They decide with respect to their own attitude and beliefs, according to their farm structure and they take into account programs and regulations of the overarching policy scheme. In this paper we used mail surveys with identical questions to establish a cross-national comparison of two case study areas. The questionnaire investigates farmer's perspectives on what influences their own decision-making as well as their perception of the socio-ecological environment to relate these findings to the respective policy schemes in the case study areas. The two case studies are located in Southern Illinois, United States and in central Switzerland. The analysis shows that full-time farmers of the Southern Illinois case study area rate constraining factors such as financial aspects higher than Southern Illinois part-time farmers and farmers from the central Switzerland case study area. Furthermore, it is apparent that Swiss case study-farmers rate aspects of their land use responsibility and the Illinois case study-farmers rate ecological aspects higher. The empirical findings can be qualitatively explained through analysis of agricultural policy schemes.     

Assessing the growth-inducing impact of the Appalachian Development Highway System in southern Ohio: Did policy promote change?

The concept of “inducing growth” is typically considered an adverse consequence of a project on the land use system. In certain instances, however, the desire to induce growth and foster land use change is a focus of land use policy. Such is the example of the Appalachian Highway Development System (AHDS) program initiated by the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) during the late 1960s. With the goal of providing highway infrastructure to improve assess to a geographically isolated and historically impoverished region, the ADHS has added nearly 3000 miles of highway to the Appalachian landscape. The degree to which highway investment has contributed to regional growth remains a controversial point and tractable methods to quickly assess landscape change given a project of this magnitude are elusive. In this paper a portion of the AHDS trending through southern Ohio is examined using data acquired from the Landsat series of satellites. Beginning with a pre-highway condition in 1976, a 26 year time horizon, concluding in 2002, was analyzed based on a post-classification change detection methodology. Results of this investigation revealed slight, yet significant, levels of urban expansion within a 10 km corridor along the path of AHDS Corridor D/State Route 32. Beyond this buffer zone the land use system evidenced more stability, suggesting that as distance increased from Corridor D/State Route 32, reduced accessibility also reduced the attractiveness of land for urban uses. Relating these results back to the infrastructure investment policies of the ARC demonstrates that growth did result from the construction of Corridor D and supports previous findings that land development based on highway construction is extremely time-sensitive.     

Economic impacts of conservation farming in a marginal environment: the case of ‘Landcare’ in the Philippines

In the marginal, upland regions of the Philippines, soil erosion and poverty are significant problems. The Landcare Programme has sought to address these twin problems. We assess the economic impacts of the Landcare Programme in the Province of Bohol. We first explore whether the adoption of Landcare practices, particularly those of contour farming and tree planting, in a highly degraded landscape has resulted in improved livelihood outcomes for upland farming families. Second, we analyse the potential for the piecemeal adoption of these measures to deliver tangible benefits at the watershed scale. Finally, using a benefit–cost approach, these outcomes are compared with the costs of research and extension projects that have helped achieve them. We conclude that the net economic impact of the Landcare Programme in Bohol is positive, with the primary beneficiaries being the individual households that adopt the Landcare practices. These benefits are largely generated by productive opportunities that arise once the hillsides have been stabilized. Although the downstream impacts of land-use changes associated with the Landcare Programme are positive, they are of marginal economic importance. Hence, the focus and primary justification of the Landcare Programme should be on improving the productivity and livelihoods of upland farming households.     

What determines the efficiency of Australian mining companies?

We examine the firm‐specific determinants of technical efficiency in Australian mining companies using data envelopment analysis (DEA). To do so, we employ panel data sourced from individual mining companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) over the period 2010–2014. To ensure valid statistical inference in the presence of serial correlation between DEA efficiency scores, we apply Simar and Wilson's two‐stage bootstrap method. We find that ownership concentration, firm size, firm age, product portfolio, product diversification and growth status significantly contribute to efficiency gains. However, other firm‐specific factors, such as capacity utilisation, financial risk and overseas operations appear to have limited impact on the technical efficiency of mining firms.