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Food Chains: Quality, Safety and Efficiency in a Challenging World addresses the many issues facing European food producers and other food chain stakeholders, who endeavour to improve their competitive position in a highly competitive world food market. The Food Chain is one of the main economic pillars in Europe, providing employment and opportunities for economic development in rural areas. It is therefore imperative to continuously monitor the changes that affect the sector, in order to allow stakeholders to respond promptly and effectively to the new market conditions. Adjusting to the new

Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries future stand in the world's economy depends to a large extent on the potentials of their agriculture to perform in a free trade world. EU is the largest market for agricultural products of MENA countries, though new outlets and new partnerships can expand the market of their produce. Enhancing agriculture's potentials safeguards the economy's general expansion and impede the flee of MENA countries' huge labor reserves to the developed world. In this work, introducing a few possible trade reforms, a general equilibrium model is employed to assess the impacts upon region's export potentials and welfare changes. Selecting certain distinct scenarios from a wide spectrum of anticipated trade reforms, and feeding them into the model, insights on the direction of the expected changes and rough estimates of accrued benefits can be extracted. The model results suggest that the region might benefit the most under special provisions for developing countries in a WTO agreement, while in the case of EU-Med agreement agricultural trade will benefit MENA countries and can induce economic growth through the expansion of agricultural exports.

AbstractThis article investigates smoker's profile by addressing the determinants of cigarette demand and providing a circumstantial exposition of the psychosocial characteristics that differentiate smoking patterns. At the same time, the impact of tobacco control policies on smoking rates and their effectiveness on decreasing cigarette consumption are also analyzed. Consumers are distinguished in four smoking groups in concurrence to smoking status, and dichotomous indicators are constructed to describe tobacco control policies, psychosocial, demographic, and socioeconomic characteristics. The empirical analysis estimates an ordered probit model with sample selectivity. The results indicate the absence of selectivity bias for cigarette consumption; hence, the subsample of smokers comprises a random independent sample and smoking participation and cigarette consumption form distinct stages of smoking behavior. Most of the psychosocial factors are found to be statistically significant in the econometric analysis, implying the main determinants of smoking behavior. In addition, total smoking bans in workplaces and educational institutions comprise efficient policy tools for decreasing cigarette demand, while partial smoking restrictions are accrued to be ineffective in reducing smoking participation.

Intro -- Preface -- Contents -- Chapter 1: The Effect of Financial and Non-financial Factors on the Productivity and Profitability of the Goat Industry: A Mod... -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 Literature Review -- 1.3 Methodology -- 1.3.1 SEM Theory -- 1.3.2 Results of SEM -- 1.4 Discussion -- 1.5 Conclusions -- References -- Chapter 2: Initiating Transition to Agro-ecological Farming Systems in Market-Oriented Arable Farming with Soil Conservation P... -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Materials and Methods -- 2.3 Results -- 2.3.1 Social Network Analysis -- 2.3.2 SES Results -- 2.3.3 Agro-ecological Practices in Soil Conservation Farming -- 2.3.4 Drivers and Barriers in the Adoption of Soil Conservation Practices and Key Instruments to Address Them -- 2.3.5 Assessment of Market and Policy Incentives (MPIs) -- 2.3.6 Multi-criteria Assessment of Market and Policy Incentives (MPIs) -- 2.4 Discussion -- Appendix A -- Appendix B -- References -- Chapter 3: Competitiveness, Sustainability Performances and Policy Options in the Sheep Meat Sector of Mediterranean Countries -- 3.1 Introduction and Objectives -- 3.2 The Sheep Meat Sector in the Mediterranean -- 3.3 Sustainability and the Sheep Sector -- 3.4 Concept and Assessment of Competitiveness -- 3.5 Methodology -- 3.5.1 Market Share (Export-Import) -- 3.5.2 Competitiveness Indices -- 3.5.3 Trade Balance Indices -- 3.6 Results -- 3.7 Conclusions and Recommendations -- References -- Chapter 4: Countries´ Image and Agricultural Trade Volume -- 4.1 Introduction -- 4.2 Definition of Countries´ Image -- 4.3 Methodology and Data -- 4.4 Results -- 4.5 Conclusions -- Appendix -- References -- Chapter 5: Designing a Traceability Framework for Sustainable Agri-Food Supply Chains -- 5.1 Introduction -- 5.2 Sustainability and Traceability -- 5.3 Framework Design -- 5.3.1 Addressing Consumer Perspectives.

'Modern biotechnology is a central issue in the public debate as there are still concerns about possible adverse effects deriving from the use of genetically modified organisms. The public, by influencing decisions on new biotechnology, politically through democratic channels or interest groups, but also as consumers via the market, will constitute the ultimate judge of agricultural biotechnology. The present research paper deals with attitudes towards genetically modified food (GM foods) in the European Union and their change over a given time period, using survey data of the Eurobarometer of 1999 (EB 52.1) and 2002 (EB 58.0). The analysis mainly focuses on the 2002 data trying to explain national differences of attitudes towards GM foods. In a first step, an overview of all European member countries concerning their attitude towards genetically modified (GM) food products in general will be provided. A more detailed approach is applied on selected countries, namely Greece, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. In addition, an effort to explain differences in attitudes towards GM foods through cross-cultural differences will be made using data from the European Social Survey (ESS, 2002).' (author's abstract)|

One of the key questions that concerns policy makers, related to the long term planning of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), is the form of agriculture that farmers intend to follow in the future. In order to highlight that question, a sample of producers from the region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace in Greece were surveyed and analyzed in order to identify and assess the factors that influence farmers' adoption of organic, conventional or integrated agriculture systems. The paper methodologically applies double-valued logistic regressions, one for each form of agriculture, to the selected sample. Results indicate that producers' training and high awareness of CAPpolicies are positively correlated with the future adoption of organic farming systems, while the adoption of integrated agriculture depends on producers' age as well as their positive or negative opinions regarding the conventional agricultural system.

International audience ; Food quality schemes (FQS: organic and geographical indication products) are often supposed to be more sustainable by their political advocates. We explore the social sustainability advantage of FQS through the lens of supply chains' bargaining power (BP) distribution. We propose an indicator synthesizing different sources underlying BP (competition-based, transactional, institutional) and counting two dimensions (fair BP distribution and adaptation capacity), that we apply to 18 FQS supply chains and corresponding reference. FQS perform better than their reference products on both dimensions. This better performance is due to a combination of sources.

International audience ; Food quality schemes (FQS: organic and geographical indication products) are often supposed to be more sustainable by their political advocates. We explore the social sustainability advantage of FQS through the lens of supply chains' bargaining power (BP) distribution. We propose an indicator synthesizing different sources underlying BP (competition-based, transactional, institutional) and counting two dimensions (fair BP distribution and adaptation capacity), that we apply to 18 FQS supply chains and corresponding reference. FQS perform better than their reference products on both dimensions. This better performance is due to a combination of sources.

International audience ; Food quality schemes (FQS: organic and geographical indication products) are often supposed to be more sustainable by their political advocates. We explore the social sustainability advantage of FQS through the lens of supply chains' bargaining power (BP) distribution. We propose an indicator synthesizing different sources underlying BP (competition-based, transactional, institutional) and counting two dimensions (fair BP distribution and adaptation capacity), that we apply to 18 FQS supply chains and corresponding reference. FQS perform better than their reference products on both dimensions. This better performance is due to a combination of sources.