India, being primarily agriculture-based economy, has come a long way from conventional agriculture to advanced agriculture towards realizing the tremendous potential for commercial and export-oriented agri-business. At present, commercial agriculture emphasizes on high productivity and the production is made for markets. Indian farmers are vying with global market. Many internationally [...]

Marketing and production contracts covered 39 percent of the value of U.S. agricultural production in 2003, up from 36 percent in 2001 and a substantial increase over estimated values of 28 percent for 1991 and 11 percent in 1969. Large farms are far more likely to contract than small farms; [...]

The driving force of effective Supply Chain Management (SCM) is integration among the channel members. With this in mind, the objective of this paper was planned. The research work models the Total Supply Chain Cost (TSCC) of grain supply chain and analyses the effectiveness of the various types of integration [...]

Iran ranks first among the pistachio producing countries both in production and exports for the last four decades. The data on productivity clearly shows that it is relatively low compared to other countries and has remained at that level in the last decade. Past experience of different management systems of [...]

This paper focuses on specific experiences in Africa, involving small and medium farmers and agro-processors. The national and case-study approach adopted is related and complementary to the cross-cutting document on ‘Agrifood processing’ prepared by John Wilkinson. The objective of the paper is to scrutinize and illustrate the capacity of farmers-to-processors [...]

The literature on plantations and their repercussions on economy and society display a considerable variety of concepts and definitions. This paper distinguishes between a colonial, an imperialistic and a modern plantation, the latter includes various models of integration of smallholders in the plantation economy. Contract farming between plantations and associated [...]

The major thrust of this paper is to show. that the trust and cooperation mechanisms existing in rural communities in developing economies can be a basis for efficient functioning of markets for channeling global demands to producers in hinterlands. The conceptual framework shall be based on recent theoretical developments in [...]

On comparison of three milk procurement systems of open economy namely vendor, cooperative and integrated contract system members of integrated contract system were found to have better education and landholdings. Among the members of vendor and cooperatives there was less remarkable difference in education, but better land holdings were noticed [...]

Contract farming or contract agriculture is a practice by which agro-industrial processors, exporters, domestic suppliers to supermarkets and other interested actors contract primary production with producers. The practice has grown in variety around the world, for many products, in developed and developing countries. Although generally recognized as beneficial to agricultural [...]