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.     

R&D and Innovation in Food Processing Firms in Transition Countries

We examine the implications of the liberalised economic conditions associated with the economic transformations in the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) for R&D and innovation in the food processing sector. We use a dataset derived from the World Bank's Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Surveys (BEEPS) database to examine the relationships between R&D/innovation activities in food processing firms in transition countries and (i) privatisation, (ii) foreign direct investment, (iii) trade activities, (iv) market competition pressure, and (v) economies of scale. The empirical analysis is implemented through: (i) a double‐hurdle model for R&D participation and expenditures, and (ii) a bivariate probit model for product and process innovation. We find that these economic transformations generally promote R&D/innovation activities in the food processing sector. Our results suggest that broadened and deepened economic liberalisation policies would improve the innovation performance of the food processing sector in transition countries, and would enhance competitiveness in domestic and foreign markets. They also indicate that innovation policies may need to be tailored to market and industrial characteristics of different transition regions.     

What drives stock market integration? An analysis using agribusiness stocks

This article explores the drivers of regional stock market integration with a focus on the agribusiness sector across relevant regional trade blocs around the world. We implement panel cointegration models to analyze the stock indices of agribusiness firms in the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), European Union (EU), Asia‐Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Based on the literature on market integration and stock return pricing, we identify nine possible determinants of stock market integration, which we separate into three categories: individual market performance, macroeconomic conditions, and agricultural trade. In our analysis, we account for agriculture‐specific factors to control for possible structural shifts in financial markets regimes by including the two main commodity price bubbles during last 20 years. Our results show that most of the variables included in our categories have been important factors in promoting regional stock market integration. Moreover, integration among regional stock markets was strengthened by the implementation of trade agreements. This effect is stronger in trade blocs with fewer members, such as NAFTA and MERCOSUR, compared with larger and more heterogeneous blocs, such as the EU and APEC.     

Determinants of Food Industry Performance: Survey Data and Regressions for Denmark

This paper investigates empirically the determinants of firms’ performance in the agri‐food sector by using recent survey data for Denmark. Treating sales per employee as a proxy for value added, we estimate several bootstrapped regression models to draw conclusions on the marginal effects of potential performance determinants such as the form and nature of ownership, stage of the food chain and commodity sector, new product development, staff quality, firms’ competitive stance, and elements of firms’ strategy. To draw robust inferences we apply, besides the ordinary heteroscedasticity‐corrected Tobit maximum likelihood estimator, a non‐parametric least absolute deviations estimator (LAD/CLAD) based on a quantile regression procedure. The results indicate that we cannot reject the hypothesis of no influence of dominant orientation on value added. Rather, firms’ focus on human capital, stage and commodity sector better explains their value addition. We reject the hypothesis that regional networks have no influence on value added. Location in Århus, emphasis on human capital and the negative influence of outsourcing on value added all provide supporting evidence. We reject the hypothesis of no influence of foreign direct investment (FDI), and moreover propose that FDI has targeted the Danish domestic market as a source of value added.     

Dragon Head Enterprises and the State of Agribusiness in China

This paper examines the political trajectory of agribusiness firms called ‘dragon head enterprises’ in China's ongoing agri‐food transformations. It starts from the premise that state and private elites in China are working together to consolidate a robust domestic agribusiness sector, as both an arena for national‐level rural and economic development, and a new frontier for access to resources and markets abroad. Through analyses of policy documents, market share data and ethnographic materials, I explore the organization and operation of dragon heads in the pork sector. My findings reveal that agribusiness development in China's pork sector is largely domestic, has a mixed state–private form and tends to marginalize the foreign‐based TNCs that have been the most powerful actors in the global agri‐food system to date. I argue that China is not only a destination for ‘external’ transnational capital, but also a site of agribusiness development in its own right. This has important implications for analysing capitalist transformations and for engaging global agri‐food politics.     

The Effect of Stricter Foreign Regulations on Food Safety Levels in Developing Countries: A Study of Brazil

More stringent national-level food safety standards adopted by developed countries have sent firms and governments among their lesser-developed trading partners scrambling to adopt the required measures or risk losing important export markets. Here we address whether stricter product safety standards in importing countries affect safety levels for the same products in the domestic markets of the countries that export to them. We present a case study, using national data and firm-level surveys, that examines the impacts of foreign requirements that processors adopt Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) systems on the level of safety offered in the domestic market by Brazilian processors of fishery products. This study shows that to date in Brazil the adoption of HACCP systems has been concentrated in the export sector, with only small impacts on domestic standards and food safety levels.     

The Internationalization of Firms From India: Investment,Mergers and Acquisitions

This paper analyses the rapid expansion in outflows of foreign direct investment from India and the spurt in foreign acquisitions by Indian firms, during the past decade, situated in the wider context of international investment from developing countries. Much of the investment was in manufacturing activities and most of the acquisitions were in industrialized countries. The economic stimulus and the strategic motive for the internationalization of firms from India were provided by a range of underlying factors driving the process, which differed across sectors and firms. The rapid growth in investment and acquisitions by Indian firms were partly attributable to factors implicit in the liberalization of the policy regime and the greater access to financial markets; but it must be recognized that Indian firms could not have become international without the capacity and the ability to compete in the world market. The attributes of Indian firms, which created such capacities and abilities, are embedded in the past and have emerged over a much longer period of time.     

Managing Customer Knowledge During the Concept Development Stage of the New Food Product Development Process

New product development (NPD) is a knowledge-intensive process where the generation of new ideas and concepts requires detailed knowledge of both products and customers. The high reported failure rates for innovative functional beverages suggest an inability to manage customer knowledge effectively as well as a lack of knowledge management between functional disciplines involved in the NPD process. This research explored the concept of managing customer knowledge at the early stages of the NPD process, through the use of advanced concept optimization methods, and applied it to the development of a range of functional beverages. A conjoint-based survey was administered to 400 customers in Ireland. This research identified 2 hypothetical functional beverage concepts with high levels of customer acceptance. Managing customer knowledge during the concept development stage of the NPD process can assist firms overcome customer acceptance issues associated with innovative products. Methodologies that advance both a firm's understanding of customers' choice motives and value systems can increase the chances of new product success in international food and beverage markets.     

论辽宁“生态立省”的林业发展战略

首先界定了"生态立省"的科学内涵,在分析辽宁省提出"生态立省"战略背景的基础上,指出辽宁省实施这一战略的可行性与面临的挑战,最后提出实施"生态立省"战略应该抓好的几个要点,即:正确理解林业政策与发展方针,保证其贯彻实施的稳定性与持续性;用生态经济思想指导林业生态环境建设,调动全社会力量建设林业;积极吸引外资,加大辽宁林业开放步伐;紧抓森林分类契机,实现森林科学经营;树立林木价值观念,创造良好的价值实现环境;重视林产品质量,向优质要效益。     

江西森林旅游开发的RMP分析

采用RMP分析方法,对江西森林旅游资源、客源市场、产品创新开发3个方面进行了具体的分析,提出了江西省森林旅游产品开发的理念、格局和旅游线路。     

Strategic Agricultural Export Marketing in South Pacific Island Nations

Agribusiness firms in small developing countries face a special set of circumstances when formulating strategic marketing decisions. The nature of small economies usually means that agribusiness firms must have a strong export orientation, but they have little influence in the markets to which they export. The potential for domestic market expansion is limited. Information needed for developing export marketing strategies is often lacking, or difficult and expensive to obtain. An associated feature is the high degree of risk in export marketing, caused particularly by the variability in the world markets in which these nations sell their agricultural commodities. The importance of agricultural exports to economic development in these nations means that governments intervene a good deal in the export processes. Hence, government strategic decisions also affect agribusiness export performance. Finally, the number of competing firms is often small because of the smallness of the agricultural economy and the desire by agribusiness firms to avoid severe diseconomies of small size. This set of circumstances is examined in this paper in relation to a number of small South Pacific island nations (SPINS). Emphasis in the analysis of the strategic marketing concerns of agribusiness firms in these nations is on the competitive marketing strategies adopted in both the domestic and international sectors of the agricultural export markets. The special strategic marketing problems these firms face and the ways in which they have sought to overcome them are the main focus of study. But some attention is also given to the strategic decision-making processes of governments in the region, because they also have an impact on export strategies and performance of agribusiness marketing firms.     

Industrial upgrading and development in Lesotho’s apparel industry: global value chains,foreign direct investment,and market diversification

Many low-income countries are integrated into apparel global value chains through foreign direct investment (FDI), including Lesotho, which has become the largest Sub-Saharan African apparel exporter to the US under the African Growth and Opportunity Act. More recently, South Africa has emerged as a new apparel export market in Lesotho. The two markets are supplied by different types of FDI firms – affiliates of Taiwanese transnational producers and South African manufacturers – which are part of different value chain variants. The paper assesses the implications for industrial upgrading and development of integration into these two value chain variants in Lesotho, drawing on firm-level and institutional interviews. We show that their different characteristics in terms of investors’ motivation, governance structure, end markets, firm set up and most importantly and causally, ownership and embeddedness have crucial impacts on functional, product and process upgrading, local linkages, and skill development.     

福建林产工业的现状与思考

福建林产工业长期以来一直是以消耗有限的森林资源为代价来发展的。在中国即将加入WTO的今天 ,应该注重科学技术在资源培育、产品开发中的作用 ,提高产品的科技含量和附加值。同时在政策法规上引导市场向规范化方向发展 ,促进产品质量、品种和企业管理水平上档次 ,推动行业的全面发展     

境外禁毒替代种植与森林培育——“金三角”地区毒品经济的有效替代

随着社会经济的发展和对林产品需求的持续扩大,中国木材对外依赖程度不断增加。通过“禁毒替代”的方式在东南亚国家建立森林资源培育基地,可持续地发展境外森林资源,不失为解决中国木材短缺问题的有效途径。阐述了我国目前境外“禁毒替代”的现状和发展模式,并对境外森林资源培育开发及其未来发展方向提出了建议。     

Melitz Meets Milk: The Impact of Quota Abolition on EU Dairy Export Competitiveness

Previous studies of EU milk quota abolition usually assume perfect competition (PC) in the dairy industry, despite evidence to the contrary. We use a global computable general equilibrium framework with an imperfectly competitive (IC) model variant, which offers insights into structural change (i.e. scale of output, firm entry/exit) and varietal diversity in the dairy industry. A heterogeneous‐firm Melitz extension enriches our analysis by endogenising the decision‐making process of domestic firms when exporting (or not) to specific foreign markets. The results from a PC CGE model variant are found to be consistent with respected market outlooks and official data. Furthermore, PC and IC variants generate broadly similar trends – a result corroborated in a previous study of Italian dairy firms. Our IC model prediction of a ‘shakeout’ among EU dairy firms is tentatively supported by actual observations. Finally, as an industry characterised by significant product innovation, increased extra‐EU export orientation by remaining dairy firms increases varietal choice, which further boosts EU dairy exports compared with the PC model variant.     

人地关系协调视角的森林旅游产品绿色开发

从森林旅游的人地关系机理入手,分析了森林旅游的生态伦理关系,结果表明:森林因其陆地生态系统的主体地位,在开发利用与生态环境保护之间存在着一定程度的矛盾,且当前森林旅游开发中产品低级、雷同单一等问题突出,无法满足游客多样化的需求。鉴于这种矛盾本质上是人地关系矛盾,而提出旅游开发与森林生态保育相结合、森林生态环境利用与生态文明建设相结合、市场导向与引导市场相结合3条原则,并围绕"人"、"地"需求及其关系协调,设计了解决旅游地布局、森林景观建设、旅游项目和旅游产品4个层面涉及的主要问题的绿色开发路径。     

城郊森林公园的旅游规划定位研究

从区域定位、市场定位、导向定位以及效益定位等方面对森林公园的旅游规划问题进行研究,指出森林公园旅游规划定位已违背森林公园的设立宗旨和社会服务功能的发挥,影响森林旅游的可持续发展。依据城郊森林公园的资源优势与区域特色,结合森林公园的战略使命和当今中国城市社会发展,提出城郊森林公园急需改进旅游规划定位,应立足城市旅游区域,重点满足本城市居民的休闲游憩需求,以社会效益为主体,秉持社会发展导向旅游规划,实现城市社会和谐发展的愿景。     

黑龙江省国有林区森林资源动态变化及影响因素分析

通过搜集1976—2005年黑龙江省森林资源的连续清查数据,分析了近30年来森工林区国有森林资源动态变化状况,并在归纳总结大量国内外学者所认同的影响森林资源变化的因素理论基础之上,结合黑龙江省的实际情况选取了有林地面积、人均国民生产总值、受灾森林面积、营林投资、天然林保护工程等对森林资源变化有显著影响的科学合理的指标,继而运用回归模型进行定量分析,并提出保持森林资源可持续增长应采取的对策。     

Do stronger intellectual property rights promote seed exchange: evidence from U.S. seed exports?

With increased private investment in crop breeding research in the developed world, intellectual property rights have gained importance in seed sector. Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)‐plus provisions included in recent free trade agreements between the developed and developing countries show a tendency of the developed world to impose their high standards for protection of plant intellectual property on the developing world. While stronger intellectual property rights can increase international exchange in seed, market power effect can lead to a reduction in exports of seed to foreign markets. This article estimates the impact of intellectual property rights on U.S. seed exports. The estimation is performed at a crop level using Heckman selection model. The results reveal that the impact of intellectual property rights varies across different types of crops—open‐pollinated, genetically modified, and hybrid crops. While TRIPS provisions are important to facilitate transfer of genetically modified crops, they play a minor role for open‐pollinated and hybrid crops. The results also show that plant breeders’ rights envisioned by the UPOV system can be important to promote seed exchange when proper mechanisms are put in place to enforce these rights.     

我国林产工业可持续发展之探讨

我国的林产工业发展已面临着资源、结构、市场和环境等日趋严峻的挑战 ,难以适应未来经济建设发展要求。为此 ,提出以可持续发展为振兴我国林产工业发展战略思路进行探讨