Volume 124 - Issue 2

This paper discusses the results of a study on the digitalisation of the agri-food sector in a French region characterised by small- and medium-sized farms. Our results, which rely on a survey comparing digital practices in the agri-food sector with other sectors, reveal a paradox. While digitalisation is mostly perceived as a panacea capable of increasing agricultural productivity while respecting the planet, it is not widespread in the agri-food sector and even less than in other sectors of the same size. At the same time, the perceived impact of digitalisation is also lower than in other sectors. To increase the digitalisation of this sector, two elements emerge from our results: both the implementation of a global digital transformation strategy and membership of a professional association are required. Here, we refer to a broad definition of digitalisation, which includes organisational and social aspects, and does not only address technological dimensions. Our study challenges the technocentric and productive vision of digitalisation. It suggests that farmers’ institutional environments and policies need to take a more holistic view of digitalisation to provide increased sense and generate engagement.

This study analyses the performance of vineyards in Kosovo in terms of their technical, allocative, and economic efficiency. It uses two methods to measure efficiency: Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Tobit regression. The data comes from a survey of 165 wine producers through face-to-face interviews in three regions of Kosovo – Rahovec, Suharake and Prizren – between the years 2016 and 2018, each yielding the average of inputs, outputs and prices for the three years. In order to determine the key variables for grape growing efficiency, it was necessary to consider the combined effects of the interactions between inputs, as this has an impact on overall final production. The results show great potential for improving the efficiency of viticulture. The average technical efficiency (TE) is 0.68, the average allocative efficiency (AE) is 0.77 and the average economic efficiency (EE) is 0.52. In general, TE, AE and EE were influenced by the selected variables, suggesting that the selected variables played quite an important role in enabling farmers not to use too many inputs in the production of grapes and instead to use them in appropriate proportions. It also shows how grape growers can improve their productive efficiency by adopting certain practices...

The research literature shows that agriculture has potential for development, job creation and structural change if agricultural value chains are considered in their entirety: from inputs, to farm, through processing, until marketing. This is particularly important in the case of Africa, where agriculture contributes in a major way to GDP and employment. However, this focus on value chains does not seem to have been accompanied by attention to the diversity of actors operating along value chains. Based on an extensive literature review on access to markets by farmers and on participatory research with farmers, traders, and sectoral stakeholders of leafy vegetables value chains in Kenya and Tanzania, this study argues that the role played by traders in local fresh produce markets in Africa is poorly understood and supported. It is argued that powerful narratives about the benefits of direct access to market by farmers, which are also present in academic literature, are sometimes overoptimistic, or interpreted beyond their scope and applied regardless of the specific features of actors and produce. The study shows that the leafy vegetables trade provides self-employment for many women, and that it has positive impacts on other groups, notably farmers.

This study empirically explores the impact of consumer confidence on frozen and chilled pork belly prices in Korea, taking the quality difference into account. For our analysis, we utilise the vector error correction model (VECM) and impulse-response function. Based on the weak exogenous test results, we find that consumer confidence has a long-run causality on frozen and chilled pork belly prices in Korea. The cointegration vector from VECM also shows that consumer confidence has a positive and negative effect on high- (chilled pork belly) and low-quality food (frozen pork belly) prices, respectively. Impulse-response function results reveal that chilled pork belly prices are affected by consumer confidence more frozen pork belly prices. Our findings have implications for Korean pig meat farmers as well as importers. First, consumer confidence, a leading composite index for the future, is important for high-quality pork, particularly chilled pork belly. In turn, pig-raising farmers that produce chilled pork belly may improve their profits by setting the number of pigs they raise based on the consumer confidence index. Second, importers of frozen pork belly can enhance their profits by choosing their import volume based on the consumer confidence index. Our results confirm that consumer confidence affects the demand...

The supply and use of bio-based products may yet shape the future, contributing to the achievement of broader objectives such as climate neutrality, circularity, and sustainability. Reducing dependency on non-renewable resources, and substituting fossil-based resources with biomass by way of a transition to a sustainable industrial – and especially chemical – sector, represent important challenges. To be able to understand what may be desirable pathways to a ‘green’ chemical sector, insights on the upcoming needs of biomass for the EU bio-based industry are required, together with information about its availability and the way it is produced. However, there is a lack of methodologies and quantitative tools capable of assessing and anticipating potential developments in the EU bio-based markets. To provide an early theoretical basis for the upcoming modelling of supply chains of the bio-based materials market, this short communication presents the conceptual framework underlying the BioMAT (Bio-based MATerials) model, developed in the course of the EU H2020 BioMonitor project.