Conflicts of interests have been hypothesized when agricultural advisory services are connected to agri-input businesses. However, these have not been examined using large sets of advisory service and grower data. We provide quantitative insights into dependencies between service, crop production, sustainability and the level of agri-input business-linkage of extension workers. This study analyzed 34,000+ prescription forms (recommendations) issued to growers in China, as well as grower interview data.
The Fiji Islands, like many small Pacific island nations, are thought to incur high rates of postharvest loss. Little work has been undertaken to quantify the amount of loss within Pacific horticultural value chains, or identify the key determinants. This study sought to quantify postharvest loss within Fijian smallholder tomato value chains and to examine the relative importance of current on-farm practices as possible contributors to this loss.
Traditional approaches addressing hunger, typically based on agricultural development, are deemed insufficient alone to address the problem and attention is now being directed to food value chains, although experience is currently limited. To assess the state of science and identify knowledge gaps, an integrative review of the broad topic of value chains and diet quality was undertaken, with particular focus on interventions and their related impact pathways.
Boundary-spanning search for knowledge is an effective way for enterprises to acquire heterogeneous knowledge, and is also an important pre-stage to realize effective knowledge reconstruction. Based on the boundary-spanning search for knowledge theory, this paper studies the relationship between boundary-spanning search for knowledge and the sustainable innovation ability of agricultural enterprises considering the influence of organizational knowledge reconstruction, from a Chinese perspective.
The impact of global warming on crop growth periods and yields has been evaluated by using crop models, which need to provide various kinds of input datasets and estimate numerous parameters before simulation. Direct studies on the changes of climatic factors on the observed crop growth and yield could provide a more simple and intuitive way for assessing the impact of climate change on crop production.