This paper focuses on the notion of localised agricultural and agro-food system as unit of analysis (LAFS). LAFSs appear to be as quite resilient and dynamic systems. As we will see, the analysis of exports in the last years can provide enough evidence of their strong resilience and capability...

Free trade has become a modern-day creed, accepted by both wealthy industrialized countries and many governments of developing countries as the generator of economic growth, development and employment. However, free trade has also been condemned by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in...

Land and market imperfections shape the organization of agricultural production and lead to different production regimes within rural farm households in South Africa. This paper presents a theoretical model to explain the presence of three main households groups (classes) determined on the basis...

Agriculture is the main user of the world’s water resources. Due to increasing concern on water quality and quantity, there is a growing interest to use the scarce water resources in the most efficient way to feed the growing world population. By employing a meta-analysis, this paper shows...

Supermarket shelves are saturated with numerous varieties and brands of juice beverages. This high level of assortment has dramatically changed beverage consumption patterns and trends throughout the United States. In fact, during 2004-2005, energy and sport drinks experienced significant...

Competitiveness of European Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SME) in the global marketplace is correlated to and determined by diverse factors. However, specifically SME’s ability to satisfy explicit and implicit customer requirements as well as to proactively integrate them as a driver of...

The public R&D system represents an important part of the framework conditions for carrying out innovation activities and creating commercially applicable knowledge (Drejer and Jørgensen, 2004). It is an important source of information for companies, particularly those that are developing new...

One of the critical success factors for the future development of the agri-food sector is the increased integration of enterprises and other stakeholders in horizontal and vertical ‘communities’. Tracking and tracing, agreements on quality policy, improvements in logistics, dissemination of...

Nowadays food products are produced in vertically collaborating networks. The questions of how such chain networks have to be designed and which governance structure fits best have been addressed in several well known articles. However, questions dealing with chain strategy and management are...

The food system negatively affects the environment, human health and the total well being of the society in many ways, causing: soil and water depletion, pollution due to the waste treatments, acid rains, desertification, climate change, ozone depletion and biodiversity loss. The paper endeavors...