This paper reviewed the potential of underutilized indigenous and traditional crops to bring about a transformative change to South Africa’s food system. South Africa has a dichotomous food system, characterized by a distinct, dominant agro-industrial, and, alternative, informal food system. This dichotomous food system has inadvertently undermined the development of smallholder producers.
Multi-stakeholder participation (MSP) has become a central feature in several institutions and processes of global governance. Those who promote them trust that these arrangements can advance the deliberative quality of international institutions, and thereby improve the democratic quality, legitimacy and effectiveness of both the institutional landscape, as well as decisions made within it. This paper employs a heuristic framework to analyze the deliberative quality of MSP.
Valuation of nature (biodiversity: BD) and in particular ecosystem services (ESS) are important prerequisites for the design of cultural landscapes as well as in agricultural policy and the generation of BD as public interest. Designs should be built on valuation and valuation is usually seen as market assignment of prices. Yet, there is a problem with market failure. BD and ESS can be characterized as public goods, both being non-rival and non-exclusive, thus demanding public provision. Largely due to public pressure, nature provision and planning has received increased attention.
Although agricultural value chain resilience is a crucial component to food security and sustainable food systems in developing countries, it has received little attention. This paper synthesizes knowledge from the social-ecological systems (SES), supply chain management, and value chain development literature to make three contributions to this research gap. First, it is conceptualized the agricultural value chain resilience and relate it to overall food system resilience.
Synergy among the various components of national agricultural innovation systems (AISs) promotes agricultural development. This paper investigated the innovation synergy among the various innovation elements of national AISs. First, the authors developed a synergy analysis model consisting of three innovation variables (innovation allocation, innovation output, and innovation potentiality) and one control variable (government policy supports).
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is increasingly seen as a promising approach to feed the growing world population under climate change. The review explored how institutional perspectives are reflected in the CSA literature. In total, 137 publications were analyzed using institutional analysis framework, of which 55.5% make specific reference to institutional dimensions. While the CSA concept encompasses three pillars (productivity, adaptation, and mitigation), the literature has hardly addressed them in an integrated way.
This paper published in the 56th Annual Conference of The Agriculture Economics Association of South Africa, describes the opportunities of innovation bringed by the new global cannabis marketing, especially in Lesotho and aims to fill the gap of focused social scientific research on the potential of cannabis cultivation to promote inclusive growth creating conditions of improved social justice and economic emancipation
The paper specifically proposes a framework to detect and quantify non-linear consequences in response to progressively deteriorating chain fragility factors. The paper’s approach is a novel alternative to the traditional value chain ‘risk assessment’.
This study examines the price transmission mechanisms in the Bloemfontein beef market using the producer price and retail prices at four retail outlets collected over a period of 3 years. It further estimates the causality links between the producer and retail prices. The traditional (Engle-Granger) and standardized (Enders & Siklos) Augmented Dickey- Fuller procedures were used to test for co-integration and asymmetry in price transmission
Small millets, a group of highly nutritious food, have taken a back seat in the Indian agriculture landscape in recent years, due to government policies and failings in the value chain. In this commentary, the unusual decline of small millets in comparison to its substitutes, and the repercussions thereof, were first presented as context. Thereafter, based on analysis of data from literature, survey, and stakeholder contributions, a cluster map for the Indian small millets value chain was designed, and its competitive state presented.