Suchergebnisse

Food quality incidents have made societal concerns on food safety grow worldwide. In the developed world, academics and practitioners explore food quality using a supply chain perspective. In transitional economies, such as China, this perspective is largely unexplored. This book addresses food quality and firm performance improvements through supply chain integration and quality management in China's pork processing industry. Data were collected from Chinese pork processing firms. This book shows the relationship between quality management practices and firm performance. Factors that influence firm performance include in-company quality management, supplier/customer quality management, employee involvement and integrated governance mechanisms. This book is a valuable resource for practitioners of meat processing enterprises, as well as academic researchers with an interest in the areas of agri-food supply chain governance, quality management and firm performance in transitional economies

Abstract— Rice production in Xieng Ngeun District (XND), Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR) faces several challenges that have resulted in a decline in rice production and a, therefore, food insecurity in the country. Smallholder farmers in XND, Luang Prabang in the Northern part of Lao are the most affected resulting in poor households and economies. Therefore, this study aims first to identify the key constraints affecting rice production systems; secondly to review the opportunities that exist in the rice production systems and lastly, to discuss opportunities that exist if the constraints are mitigated that can boost sustainable development of rice-based systems (SDRBS). A structured questionnaire was administered to village headmen, community members, and farmers in the nine selected villages with a total sample size of 374 farmers. Farmers' strength for rice is that they have agricultural land, on average 3 hectares per family. Apart from rice production, the majority of farmers have diversified into maize, Job's tears, vegetable cultivation and livestock keeping. The key strength of the respondent was the availability of land as most of them had more than 3ha of agricultural land. The diversification into the production of other crops is an important constraint to rice production. Labour was also an important constraint to rice production as most families have more than six children; thus, one member has to stay behind to take care of the children. The opportunities to improve rice production is mainly in the adoption of modern farming approaches using improved rice varieties, fertilizer application, use of herbicides for weed control and pesticides for insects and disease control. The farmers do not use pesticides to control insect pest and disease, and thus perennially faced challenges in rice production due to pest and diseases outbreaks. Moreover, there was a low rice productivity since majority of the the farmers did not use fertilizers in their fields, with a paltry 0.8% of the farmers recording ...

The changing climatic conditions coupled with fodder availability have posed severe challenges and threats for the dairy sector in Pakistan. The current paper determines the influence of climate change on the dairy sector in Pakistan. Comprehensive data set was collected from 450 farmers. The majority of farmers experienced the climate change and its variability and explained that severity and frequency of climatic extreme events such as droughts, heat waves, floods, pests and diseases and humidity is increasing. The study found that farmers considered drought as one of the major climatic risks which severely affects all aspects of dairy production. Specifically, to estimate the perceived impacts of climatic extreme event on milk production, an ordered probit model was applied and identified that climate change had high adverse impact on milk quantity in the study area. Different adaptation practices, such as changing cropping pattern for fodder production, off-farm income activities, diversifying the farm and regular vaccination are mostly used by dairy farmers. The study recommends policy initiatives to be taken by government for long term developments in the dairy farming.

AbstractRural Savings and Credit Cooperatives (RuSACCOs) are small‐scale financial service provider enterprises in rural areas. They foster local economic development by mobilizing deposits and lending these out to individuals, families, farmers, and small businesses in the same area. Using balanced panel data of 457 RuSACCOs from Ethiopia over the period 2014–17, we show how deposit mobilization affects technical efficiency. Our first stage efficiency estimate by Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Window model shows the average efficiency of RuSACCOs gradually increased over time. The second stage Tobit censored estimation and bootstrapped truncated regression results confirms our hypotheses for key and control variables effects on technical efficiency. Focusing on rapid expansion during the early life cycle affects technical efficiency. A high percentage of women membership in cooperative enterprises advances technical efficiency. Furthermore, attracting and including all segments of the local entrepreneurial class as a membership opens the possibilities for mobilizing more deposits to become efficient.

The changing climatic conditions coupled with fodder availability have posed severe challenges and threats for the dairy sector in Pakistan. The current paper determines the influence of climate change on the dairy sector in Pakistan. Comprehensive data set was collected from 450 farmers. The majority of farmers experienced the climate change and its variability and explained that severity and frequency of climatic extreme events such as droughts, heat waves, floods, pests and diseases and humidity is increasing. The study found that farmers considered drought as one of the major climatic risks which severely affects all aspects of dairy production. Specifically, to estimate the perceived impacts of climatic extreme event on milk production, an ordered probit model was applied and identified that climate change had high adverse impact on milk quantity in the study area. Different adaptation practices, such as changing cropping pattern for fodder production, off-farm income activities, diversifying the farm and regular vaccination are mostly used by dairy farmers. The study recommends policy initiatives to be taken by government for long term developments in the dairy farming.