What Our Students Should Know: Perspectives from Business and Academia

Perspectives from business and academia on the relative importance of various skills and attributes were compared. The perspective from academia came from the University of Guelph learning objectives and the AEB simple and complex skills required for undergraduate majors. A survey of Canadian agribusiness firms, including governmental agencies, provided the business perspective. Different types and sizes of businesses were consistent in ranking the relative importance of the various skills and attributes. The rankings by business were also consistent with the hierachial learning objectives from the University of Guelph and the disciplinary skills from the AEB. The hypothesis that business and academia are more convergent than divergent as to what our students should know is supported by these results.
Both business and academia rank communication skills highly. Business ranks personal qualities slightly higher than communication skills, but universities recognize that they can only screen for personal qualities, as opposed to the skills that they can enhance through education. Relatively low rankings of technical, computer and quantitative skills and experience should not be interpreted to mean they are unimportant, but rather that they are necessary but not sufficient for entry-level employees to succeed in agribusiness firms.     

Characteristics of Successful Southeastern U.S. Agribusiness Exporters

Abstract

A survey of southeastern U.S. agribusiness exporters showed that export firms had many characteristics in common regardless of commodity category. In general, the profile of a successful southeastern U.S. agribusiness exporter in terms of export sales is one that tends to have higher total sales, foreign and domestic, and more export-market experience though the firm tends to be relatively young. While almost half of the firms engaged in promotion activities, less than a quarter of the respondents availed themselves of federal export promotion/assistance programs because of unfamiliarity or perceived costs. An overwhelming majority considered freight forwarding companies as indispensable parties to all transactions because of the extreme complexity of export-import logistics.     

A model of entry–exit decisions and capacity choice under demand uncertainty

Many investment decisions of agribusiness firms, such as when to invest in an emerging market or whether to expand the capacity of the firm, involve irreversible investment and uncertainty about demand, cost or competition. This paper uses an option‐value model to examine the factors affecting an agribusiness firm's decision whether and how much to invest in an emerging market under demand uncertainty. Demand uncertainty and irreversibility of investment make investment less desirable than the net present value (NPV) rule indicates. The inactive firm is more reluctant to enter the market when it takes into account demand uncertainty because it preserves the opportunity of making a better investment later. The active firm is more reluctant to abandon the investment because there is an option value of keeping the operation alive. There is a greater distance between the entry and exit thresholds under the option‐value approach than under the NPV rule due to demand uncertainty. The results have implications for agribusiness decision‐making.     

Using MANECSIM as a Simulation for Agribusiness Capstone Courses

MANECSIM is a business simulation especially developed for use in economic-based management classes. Students are put in charge of a firm and must make periodic managerial decisions in the areas of marketing, production, and finance in an environment in which economic conditions and competing firms influence the firm's performance. MANECSIM allows students to apply concepts and techniques learned about demand, forecasting, production, cost analyses, and financial planning—all major topics in agribusiness programs. The simulation offers an alternative to traditional case studies providing students with a "real-life" decision-making experience.     

Foreign Direct Investment and the Performance of European Agribusiness Firms

This article analyses the relationship between foreign direct investment and the performance of European agribusiness firms. Motivated by the role of heterogeneous firms in new trade theory and using a firm‐level dataset, statistical analyses identify key differences between firms investing in foreign economies and those that do not. A binary choice model quantifies the relationship between firm characteristics and the decision to engage in foreign investment. Size and – less strongly – productivity are greater for multinationals relative to domestic firms. Furthermore, European multinationals are characterised by a larger debt to equity ratio and show lower labour and input costs.     

Occupational sex segregation in agriculture: Evidence on gender norms and socio-emotional skills in Nigeria

Occupational sex segregation is a key driver of the gender gap in earnings. Using data from 11,691 aspiring agribusiness entrepreneurs in Nigeria, this article explores factors that drive sectoral choice, gender differences in the choice decision, and especially the role played by norms around gender roles. When given a choice of 11 agricultural value chains in a government program, we find the majority (54 percent) of the applicants chose to enter into the poultry value chain, and women were more likely to choose poultry than men. This article finds evidence of more restrictive gender norms in Northern Nigeria states, which lowers women's likelihood of entering into agricultural value chains where the potential for profit may be higher. The gender bias in sectoral choice is also attributed to differences in work experience especially in agricultural activities and in the chosen value chain, as well as in land ownership. Women with more experience in male-dominated agricultural value chains exhibit lower self-efficacy, which could reflect the challenges they face when deviating from social norms to operate within nontraditional value chains.     

The Effect of Market Orientation on Learning,Innovativeness, and Performance in Primary Agriculture

Market awareness and innovativeness are important resources in any business environment. As customer needs and competitor responses change, performance may depend on the ability for firms to recognize and react to market shifts. Using survey data from beef farmers in Illinois, we examine the role market orientation, organizational learning, and innovativeness play on satisfaction with performance. We use a structural equation model to find that market‐oriented and innovative firms are more satisfied with their performance while controlling for structural and demographic variables. Results also show that while market‐oriented firms are more innovative, human capital resources moderate the ability to exploit innovations. We also find that an increase in experience correlates with less organizational learning.     

Chinese investment in the Brazilian soybean sector: Navigating relations of private governance

This paper examines how Chinese agribusiness firms are engaging with established systems of private governance in the Brazilian soybean sector and how that engagement is variously accommodated, contested, and configured by local realities that reflect the uneven history of transnational agribusiness development across the Brazilian agro‐export region. Using qualitative data collected at three research sites that represent different historical moments in the Brazilian agro‐export region (Mato Grosso, Goiás, and Bahia), the paper argues that the social structures underlying the particular agrarian histories of these three subregions create unique contexts Chinese firms must navigate, which in turn shapes their engagement with the private agribusiness regime across space. Although the private agribusiness regime is often portrayed as a top‐down system of governance that subjugates the polity to the demands of capital, this framing neglects to understand how that system of power is contested, negotiated, and reshaped on the ground. These three cases serve to historicize the uneven penetration of Chinese firms across the Brazilian soybean sector.     

Agribusiness,Peasant Agriculture and Labour Markets: Ecuador in Comparative Perspective

The consolidation of capitalist agriculture in countries such as Ecuador has led to a recent revaluation of territories (central highlands) where cheap labour has facilitated agribusiness development linked to the world market. This process generates growth in the numbers of rural wage workers and the creation of a labour market that, in relation to others in several Latin American countries, has certain particularities: permanent jobs, gender balance, an absence of intermediaries and low levels of precariousness. Small‐scale peasant producers are marginalized in this context and play functional roles within the current dynamics of agribusiness firms. The organizational weakness of rural wage earners and the pursuit of clientelist relationships by firms do not allow rural workers and local communities to devise economic and social strategies that might improve their position in this ‘field of forces’ in the territory.     

Are returns to research quality lower in agricultural economics than in economics?

We compare effects of research quality and quantity on the salary of academics in agricultural economics and economics departments of the same universities. Agricultural economists get a significantly lower payoff to research quality, whether measured by quality‐weighted journal articles (based on nine different weighting schemes) or by citations. Instead, salary depends on the quantity of journal articles, while article counts have no independent effect on economist salaries. These differences in the reward structure for research are not due to either the extension focus of agricultural economists or to disciplinary differences in publishing with students and instead may reflect institutional factors that govern incentives within universities. One‐third of academics in the agricultural economics departments studied here have doctoral training in economics; the very different disciplinary reward structures may cause frustration for these faculty due to the muted returns to research quality that agricultural economics departments seem to offer.     

Tobacco,contract farming,and agrarian change in Zimbabwe

The growth of smallholder tobacco production since 2000 has been one of the big stories of Zimbabwe's post–land reform experience. Yet the implications for agrarian change, and the consequences for new relations between farmers, the state, and agribusiness capital have rarely been discussed. The paper reports on work carried out in the Mvurwi area of Mazowe district in Zimbabwe with a sample of 220 A1 (smallholder) farmers and 100 former farmworkers resident in compounds on the same farms. By going beyond a focus on operational and business dimensions of contract farming, the paper concludes with reflections on the implications for understanding agrarian relations and social differentiation in those areas of Zimbabwe where tobacco growing is now significant, with lessons more broadly on the political economy of contract farming, and the integration of agribusiness capital following land reform.     

Transnational Farmland Investment: A Risky Business

Transnational farmland investments in much of the Global South are risky for all parties involved: agribusiness firms and their financial backers; host‐country governments; and the people on the spot. This essay focuses on political risk, which encompasses policy shifts, legal disputes and push‐back from affected populations. It draws on the analytical framework of ‘powers of exclusion’ (see the work of D. Hall, P. Hirsch and T.M. Li) to consider how transnational investors attempt to deploy force, law and market transactions to secure and legitimate farmland deals; yet they remain fragile, as do the governments that enable them.     

New Paths to Capitalist Agricultural Production in Africa: Experiences of Ghanaian Pineapple Producer–Exporters

With the global restructuring of agri‐food markets since the 1980s, an impressive amount of scholarship has examined its impacts in African countries. However, little has been written on the emergence of local medium and large‐scale commercial farmers selling to export companies or controlling their own export marketing arrangements. This article examines Ghanaian commercial farmers producing and exporting fresh pineapples to European markets. This group of pineapple producer–exporters represents a path to capitalist agricultural production that can be conceptualized as capitalism from outside: where capital flows into the countryside, rather than accumulation occurring from above or below within the agrarian economy. The emergence of this form of agrarian capitalism is stimulated by opportunities in new high‐value agricultural export markets, but its stabilization depends on country‐specific characteristics such as rural social structures, property rights and state support. The article documents the conditions of emergence of this new group of Ghanaian capitalist farmers, the period of destabilization caused by increasing international competition that resulted in a small number of large‐scale agribusiness firms surviving, and the challenges that these agribusiness firms faced in stabilizing their capitalist agricultural production.     

EXTENSION ECONOMICS—THE NEXT TEN YEARS1

In summary, let me emphasize a few highlights of the subject—Extension Economics—the next ten years.

• 1 Changing farm problems will require major adjustments by agriculture and its advisors.
• 2 Structural reform in farming and marketing arrangements of one kind or another will lead these adjustments.
• 3 Clientele of extension economists will include producers (in two basic groups), agri-business, non-agricultural rural residents and consumers.
• 4 Our approach should be on the basis of educators and we must keep up-to-date in the teaching methods and media used. Agricultural extension could logically become the center for a new broad program of continuing adult education.
• 5 Subject matter areas of concern to the economist must be broadened to actively include marketing, processing and public affairs.
• 6 A sound program of physical and economic research must be provided as a companion to effective extension work. Greater collaboration is necessary—both ways.
• 7 Personnel for extension economics will be forthcoming only if salary adjustments are made and university curricula revised to better train extension people.
• 8 Extension economists must use care and diplomacy in their relationships with University, Federal and Provincial officials.
• 9 We still have responsibility to more completely demonstrate the usefulness of our knowledge to other extension workers, administrators, and the farm public. Recognition must also be given to working closely with advisors in agri-business and private consulting firms.
• 10 Program evaluation, internal and external, are essential for a healthy program in extension economics.

     

An Assessment of Student Acceptance and Performance in Distance Education with Two-Way Interactive Compressed Video

This paper summarizes the debate concerning the value of distance education, reports distance education experiences in agricultural economics courses at The Ohio State University, and analyzes the effects of "distance" on student performance in and acceptance of the distance course. Results suggest that distance and "live" students performed equally in the same course, and they evaluated the course experience in a similar manner. These results provide some assurance that distance education, at least using the two-way interactive synchronous learning model of the courses in this study, does not place the distant student in jeopardy.     

Agroindustrialization of the global agrifood economy: bridging development economics and agribusiness research

This paper examines the agroindustrialization process from two supposedly disparate views: development economics and agribusiness research. The evolution of conceptual and methodological approaches emanating from these fields is explored and general observations are made concerning farm economic interdependence, institutional and organizational change, differing scopes of interest, the causes of agroindustrialization, orientation, and the choice of microanalytic tools, terminology, and unit of analysis. Despite an impressive list of hurdles, disincentives, and disconnects, complementarities between the two fields are identified. The paper concludes by exploring the potential of bridging development economics and agribusiness research to inform the future agroindustrialization research agenda.     

Determinants of Agricultural Economic Faculty Salaries: A Quarter of a Century Later

This research studies factors that influence the salary level of university agricultural economists. Comparisons to previous work suggest that the impact of a single publication on salary has declined over the past twenty-five years; however, the return to relative publications is the same. The impact of years of experience has increased. Analysis of a different model specification suggests that the number of publications, advisees, and grants obtained positively impact salaries, while undergraduate course load has a negative impact. Results show that mobility and marketability significantly increase salary. Analysis suggests that there is a significant negative impact associated with an extension appointment and a significant positive impact associated with employment at a Ph.D.-granting university. Finally, the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed rank test indicates that most universities' average salaries follow the market.     

Interactivity and Soft Computing in Portfolio Management: Should Farmers Own Food and Agribusiness Stocks?

This article proposes a fully integrated and interactive elicitation-optimization procedure for portfolio management. A soft computing approach based on fuzzy logic is developed as an alternative to the traditional mean variance model and compromise programming approach. The models are applied to farmers to examine whether they should buy publicly traded food and agribusiness firms stocks rather than invest in a broader market stock portfolio. Results suggest that investments in publicly traded food and agribusiness stocks allow farmers to capture additional benefits beyond those of simply diversifying in the broader market.     

地勘单位应建立与市场接轨的薪酬分配制度

文章就地勘单位现行薪酬分配制度中存在的诸如沿用事业单位模式 ,没有系统的绩效管理制度 ,一定程度上的平均主义 ,难以适应市场经济特点等问题作了分析 ,指出其产生的原因在于出资者缺位 ,单位本身缺乏约束机制和薪酬理念更新不到位。最后 ,对地勘单位如何建立与市场接轨的薪酬体系 ,提出了五项对策建议。     

ON THE GROWTH OF THE AGRICULTURAL FIRM*

Theoretical problems involved in the reconciliation of the assumption of constant returns to scale with determinacy of firm size are discussed with particular reference to Australian farms. Various techniques for examining changes in the size distribution of firms are examined and their use demonstrated. The work is stochastic rather than deterministic. B.A.E. sheep industry survey data is used and flock size is used as the measure of farm size. The results do not suggest that inequality in the distribution of farm sizes is increasing. Growth differs between flock sizes within the same region and for the same flock size between regions. Profitability seems to be relatively larger in the medium flock sizes.