Drivers influencing farmer decisions for adopting organic or conventional coffee management practices

Colombia is one of the world’s most important producers of Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica), whose coffee-growing zone coincides with a biogeographic hotspot of biodiversity. Given that coffee agroecosystems are grown by both organic and conventional schemes of management in Santander, a region which produces coffees with specialist distinctive flavours, this study aims to better understand the factors that influence the adoption of these different schemes of management. A combination of ethnographic techniques and quantitative methods were used to examine the predominant drivers of adoption and revealed farmer perceptions associated with coffee farming, and the complexity of interacting factors, that surround their decision making. The results of qualitative analysis suggests that social identity of coffee growers, the existence of farming spaces (lived, perceived, rationalised), the influence of coffee institutions, attitudes about management practices, and social relations of production, all play an important role in the process of decision making. In quantitative terms, we identified 18 socioeconomic drivers, some with interacting effects that had significant influence on the decision to adopt either organic or conventional practices. In particular, at local scale, important factors were technology availability, the type of landowner, formal education of farmers, the role of institutions, membership of community organisations, farm size, coffee productivity and the number of coffee plots per farm. Likewise, economic drivers, such as crop profitability, determined how farmers are involved in trade and market networks at broad regional, national, and international spatial scales. By adopting a more integrated approach, combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies, we characterised the complexity of factors that influencing adoption of coffee management schemes and show that not only financial factors but also a variety of other social factors drive farmer decision making. Identifying the most influential behavioural drivers provides policy with opportunities to better support farmer livelihoods.     

我国食用农产品无缝隙化安全监管体系研究

食品安全关系到人民的健康、社会的稳定和国民经济的发展,但我国目前食用农产品安全状况触目惊心,解决这一问题迫在眉睫。文章分析了我国食用农产品安全的现状和存在的问题,从理论上探讨了食用农产品安全的外部性和信息不对称问题,在借鉴发达国家食品安全管理经验的基础上,根据无缝隙组织理论提出构建我国食用农产品安全监管体系的构想。     

Impact of off-farm labor supply on food expenditures of the farm household

Farm households diversify their income sources by working off the farm. This is a risk management strategy that is used by farm households in both developed and developing countries. Income diversification via off-farm work is associated with higher incomes and food consumption. However, little is known about the association between off-farm work and farm household food expenditures. In an effort to bridge this gap, this study attempts to assess the impact of off-farm work decisions by the operator and/or the spouse on the food expenditures of the farm household. Using a nationwide farm household survey in the United States and new econometric method, we find that the decisions of the operator and/or the spouse to work off the farm are significantly interrelated (29%). However, these two decisions affect food expenditures in different ways. The operator’s off-farm work decision is positively related to food expenditures, while the spouse’s decision is negatively associated with expenditures on food by the farm household.     

The Performance Effects of Human Resource Practices: The Case of Interclub Networks in Professional Baseball, 1919–1940

This study investigates the performance effects of two industry‐specific human resource management innovations that dramatically changed the way professional baseball teams selected and trained ballplayers. In the early part of this century, major league clubs developed and refined two player‐development practices based on “reserve team” and “farm team” systems. We use a panel data set of the win/lose records for the population of 16 major league clubs for the seasons from 1919 through 1940 to test hypotheses about the effect of human resource practices on organizational performance. The results suggest that the reserve team practice had no significant impact on organizational performance. In contrast, the more complex farm‐team system, pioneered by Branch Rickey of the St. Louis Cardinals, improved organizational performance and diffused rapidly throughout the league. We estimate that by 4 years after its creation, the farm‐team system improved a team's win rate by 0.068 points relative to nonadopters of the farm‐team system and teams with less than 4 years of prior experience with a farm‐team system. The results also show that the farm‐team effect was not confined to St. Louis but also was experienced by later adopters. These results contribute to the growing literature showing a positive effect of human resource policies on organizational performance. The results also illustrate the important role the external environment plays in shaping this relationship (e.g., legal restrictions to labor mobility).     

Impact of tissue culture banana technology on farm household income and food security in Kenya

While tissue culture (TC) technology for vegetative plant propagation is gradually gaining in importance in Africa, rigorous assessment of broader welfare effects for adopting smallholder farm households is lacking. Using survey data and accounting for selection bias in technology adoption, we analyze the impact of TC banana technology on household income and food security in Kenya. To assess food security outcomes, we employ the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) – a tool that has not been used for impact assessment before. Estimates of treatment-effects models show that TC banana adoption, combined with improved crop management, causes considerable increases in farm and household income. Technology adoption also reduces relative food insecurity in a significant way. These results indicate that TC technology can be welfare enhancing for adopting farm households. Adoption should be further promoted through upscaling appropriate technology delivery systems.     

Knowing is half the battle: Seasonal forecasts,adaptive cropping systems,and the mediating role of private markets in Zambia

This paper examines how smallholders living in regions where a drought is forecasted adapt their farm practices in response to receiving seasonal forecast information. The article draws on a unique longitudinal dataset in Zambia, which collected information from farm households before and after a significant drought caused by the 2015/2016 El-Niño Southern Oscillation. It finds that farmers residing in areas forecasted to be drought-affected and receiving seasonal forecast information are significantly more likely to integrate drought tolerant crops into their cropping systems compared to similar households not receiving this information. Moreover, the probability that a farmer implements these adaptive farm management strategies in response to seasonal forecast information is found to increase substantially as the number of private grain buyers in the farmers’ village increases. This suggests that climate change adaptation and resilience strategies that integrate the generation and dissemination of weather information with agricultural market development can achieve greater impact on farmers’ adaptive responses than approaches that treat these activities in isolation.     

PROFIBUS在温室大棚群控化管理中的应用

针对当前中国温室大棚难以实现群控化管理的问题,充分利用PROFIBUS的开放性好、可操作性强等特点,介绍了利用先进的现场总线技术设计智能温室控制系统的方法。通过网络传输体系,该系统可以实现对各个子系统的实时监控,并根据作物要求,实现对各个参数的最佳控制。本系统群控化程度高,可以实现对温室大棚的科学高效管理。     

Farmer training in off-season vegetables: Effects on income and pesticide use in Bangladesh

The cultivation of crops outside the regular cropping calendar when supply is low and prices are high can give farmers better profits and consumers more choice. However, off-season production may increase pesticide risk if crops are more affected by pests and diseases and farmers do not handle pesticides correctly. This study quantified the effect of training in off-season tomato production on the income and pesticide use of smallholder vegetable farmers in southwestern Bangladesh. The study uses farm-level data from 94 trained and 151 non-trained farm households and applies propensity score matching and inverse probability weighting to correct for selection bias. For the average smallholder vegetable farmer, training increased net household income by about 48%. We found that 31% of the trained farm households who had initially adopted the technology continued its use in the second year, but farm households who discontinued using the technology also experienced significant income gains from the training. There was a significant increase in pesticide use (+56%) and although there was an improvement in pesticide handling practices, trained farmers may have been more exposed to pesticide health risk. The policy implication is that while off-season vegetable production can create dramatic income improvements, it is important to emphasize safe and sustainable pest management methods as part of policies promoting it.     

The roles of land tenure reforms and land markets in the context of population growth and land use intensification in Africa

This article reviews the past and potential future roles of land tenure reforms and land markets in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) as responses to population growth in the process of land use intensification and livelihood transformation. The farm size distribution and the existence of an inverse relationship (IR) between farm size and land productivity in SSA and the implications of this relationship for efficiency and equity are investigated. More secure property rights and removal of restrictions on land markets have the potential to create both efficiency and equity benefits, but there are high risks of elite capture of large land areas with inefficient and inequitable outcomes. This situation is the case not only in land-abundant areas but also in urban and peri-urban areas where increasingly larger proportions of people will make their living. Increasing population pressure in densely populated rural areas contributes to more rapid rural–urban migration, and creating alternative livelihood opportunities for the migrating youth population is essential to achieving economic development with social stability.     

Understanding fertilizer adoption and effectiveness on maize in Zambia

Increased fertilizer use will likely be crucial for raising and sustaining farm productivity in Africa, but adoption may be limited by ineffectiveness under certain conditions. This article quantifies the impacts of soil characteristics on maize response to fertilizer in Zambia using a nationally representative sample of 1453 fields, combining economic, farm management and soil analysis data. Depending on soil regimes, average maize yield response estimates range from insignificant (0) to 7 maize kg per fertilizer kg. For the majority of farmers, the estimated average value cost ratio is between 1 and 2, meaning fertilizer use would be fiscally rational, barring uncertainty and transfer costs. Since transfer costs exist and outcomes are uncertain, however, many farmers may sensibly pause before deciding whether to adopt fertilizer. This suggests shifting the emphasis of chronically low fertilizer use in Africa away from explanations of “market failure” toward greater emphasis on improving fertilizer efficacy.     

Combining two wrongs to make two rights: Mitigating food insecurity and food waste through gleaning operations

Two concurrent social issues in the United States are food insecurity and food waste. The practice of gleaning offers a mechanism for combining these problems to create a synergistic solution. We develop a stochastic optimization model to determine the schedule that maximizes the volume of excess crops rescued from farm fields for the purpose of feeding food-insecure households, thus maximizing social impact. We model gleaning as a service operation where donation calls arrive randomly requesting to be scheduled within a limited time window. The feature that distinguishes gleaning operations from other service settings is that there is uncertainty in both when donations will arrive and the attendance of the gleaners who are volunteers that are not obliged to attend gleaning trips. We apply our model to the gleaning operation of the Food Bank of the Southern Tier in New York State, focusing on five major crops produced in the region. By characterizing how the gleaning operation behaves, our model allows us to optimize the gleaning schedule to maximize the expected total volume gleaned and determine under which conditions different operational strategies can be most useful for improving the performance of the gleaning operation. This in turn enables us to identify conditions under which alternative policy interventions (e.g., farm donation tax credits and government grants to strengthen operational capacity) are more effective for scaling up gleaning programs.     

甘肃风电建设对电网经营影响探讨

甘肃酒泉516万kW风电机组建成投产在即,风电送出和调峰需求对电网产生了很大影响,风电一期750kV外送工程使电网投资大幅提高,同时存在购电成本和运行维护费用增加、调峰电厂经济补偿以及跨省电力交易等经营管理方面的问题。针对这些问题,深入分析了甘肃省风电建设对电网投资和经营管理造成的影响,并对电网企业如何在大规模风电建设前提下合理经营提出了建议。     

Agricultural productivity growth in Brazil: Large and small farms excel

The long-standing debate on the relationship between farm size and productivity has been generally limited by the range of farm sizes evaluated and the definition of productivity. In this paper we use data from three Brazilian agricultural censuses to address these issues. In particular, we introduce a wider distribution of farm sizes than presently available from the literature and we employ total factor productivity (TFP) as our performance measure. In doing so, we test which farm size class had the highest TFP levels in 1985 and 2006, how factor productivity growth varied within and across farm size classes between those years, and which policy or factor had the greatest productivity enhancing effect. When examining TFP growth, we move beyond the common decomposition into technical and efficiency changes by identifying the complete distribution of farm productivity performances. We find that by 2006 a U-shaped distribution of productivity over farm sizes had emerged. Considerable 1985–2006 TFP growth differences are prevalent; positive rates for the majority accompany stagnant or negative rates for some. Public education investments were associated with faster productivity growth regardless of farm size, while technical assistance’s positive effect and credit’s negative effect were associated with larger farm sizes. The role of specialization varied by size.     

Household-level determinants of adoption of improved natural resources management practices among smallholder farmers in western Kenya

Integrated natural resources management (INRM), of which integrated soil fertility management (ISFM) is a component, offers considerable promise for increasing food production in Kenya. It nonetheless remains unclear whether ISFM/INRM techniques lend themselves easily to adoption by smallholder farmers. Using panel data collected in western Kenya in 1989 and 2002, this study finds that resource constraints limit many farmers’ adoption of ISFM/INRM techniques. The size of the farm owned by a household, the value of its livestock, off-farm income, family labor supply, and the educational attainment and gender of the household head all had a significant positive effect on the likelihood of adoption. Similar factors were found to be statistically significant in discouraging abandonment of the practices under study. There thus seem to exist reinforcing feedback between investments in soil fertility management and household wealth, as measured by asset endowments. Our findings raise important questions as to whether ISFM and related techniques are really affordable to poorer smallholder farmers.     

构建以战略为导向的

随着企业社会责任运动的兴起,包括保险公司在内的企业界,在追求经营绩效的同时,也越来越关注自身的社会绩效水平。建立完善保险公司社会绩效管理体系,对于促进保险公司可持续发展具有重要的现实意义。保险公司应坚持以战略为导向,围绕战略目标制定、战略目标宣导、组织体系完善、绩效目标设定、预算安排、激励机制设计和绩效信息披露等方面,构建以战略为导向的保险公司社会绩效管理体系,推动保险公司社会绩效管理系统化、规范化。     

US farm policy in perspective

At the end of 1981 the US Congress passed new farm legislation which was widely hailed as a success for the Reagan administration's efforts to contain the escalation of farm supports, it now appears, however, that it has created serious problems in a situation of rapid agricultural productivity growth in the face of slower growth of domestic and foreign demand. Despite subsequent amendments to limit budget outlays, farm support costs are now estimated at $12 billion each in FY 1982 and 1983 and $7 billion in FY 1984, as compared with original projections of less than $3 billion annually.     

The political economy of a productivist agriculture: New Zealand dairy discourses

The New Zealand dairy industry faces political and commercial pressure to improve its environmental performance on the one hand while maintaining economic efficiency and commercial competitiveness in a global marketplace on the other. The growing scale and intensity of dairy production have caused significant cumulative environmental impacts. The industry response to political pressures for improved environmental performance has involved a narrow focus on water quality and pasture management. It is consistent with an approach which seeks to maintain size and industrial leverage in the face of global trade competition. This paper explores the productivist constructions of environmental management by the New Zealand dairy industry in the context of global economic competition and notes an alternative response inspired by an ethic of sustainability. It suggests that despite global pressures of economic competition, it is possible to incorporate non-material values into farm management provided these are recognised and rewarded.     

THE CORPORATE SOCIAL PERFORMANCE–FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE LINK

Strategic managers are consistently faced with the decision of how to allocate scarce corporate resources in an environment that is placing more and more pressures on them. Recent scholarship in strategic management suggests that many of these pressures come directly from sources associated with social issues in management, rather than traditional arenas of strategic management. Using a greatly improved source of data on corporate social performance, this paper reports the results of a rigorous study of the empirical linkages between financial and social performance. Corporate social performance (CSP) is found to be positively associated with prior financial performance, supporting the theory that slack resource availability and CSP are positively related. CSP is also found to be positively associated with future financial performance, supporting the theory that good management and CSP are positively related.© 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd     

Is an integrated farm more resilient against climate change? A micro-econometric analysis of portfolio diversification in African agriculture

This paper examines whether an integrated farm that owns both crops and livestock is more resilient under global warming than a specialized farm in crops. Using around 9000 farm surveys across Africa, we explore how farmers choose one of the farm types and how the net revenue of each type varies across the range of climate in Africa. The results indicate that an integrated farm increases in number while a specialized farm decreases across Africa under climate predictions for 2060. The relative profitability of each system against each other also changes. An integrated farm becomes relatively more profitable over specialized farms half a century from now. The impacts of climate change on integrated farms range from 9% loss to 27% gain depending on climate scenarios. Behavioral models can capture portfolio diversification benefits that agro-economic models cannot measure.     

Do you really need help? A study of employee supplication and job performance in China

This study examines a relatively unexplored impression management tactic—supplication. Compared to other more popular impression management tactics such as ingratiation and self-promotion, we know relatively little regarding how employee supplication affects job performance. Using social role theory, we argued that when the images of Chinese employees were consistent with their social roles of receiving help, supplication would be viewed as acceptable. We tested our hypotheses among 158 supervisor–subordinate dyads in China and found that female and junior employees did not receive negative job performance ratings due to supplication. Age, on the other hand, did not moderate the supplication–performance relationship. We believe our findings are consistent with the social norms in the five cardinal relations of Confucianism regarding the modest role of certain social classes in enhancing social harmony. We discuss how our research contributes to the literature of impression management and impacts management practices in China.