Problem statement: Agriculture has been proved to be a significant impetus for development in Malaysia. Agriculture offers a number of profitable activities, contract farming is one of it and it is still in infancy stage. Besides being a developed sector in Malaysia, it still has a number of problems to be solved. Gender [...]

This article describes the process of institutional transition of contract farming in Shandong Province. The changes in preparatory stage of contract farming express in: One, the information asymmetry of the two sides of the contract is reducing; Two, the security system of contract farming tends to be perfection; Three, the [...]

Contracting and other forms of vertical coordination are important parts of the supply chains for many agricultural products. Often the buyer cares about multiple product attributes affected by a grower’s actions. Using data that are insulated from common methodological problems, we test whether or not price incentives for two processing [...]

Economic liberalisation, improved transport and communication systems, and the global demand for energy, minerals and agricultural commodities have fostered natural resource investment in many lower- and middle-income countries. Increased investment may create opportunities to improve living standards, but it also creates risks such as environmental damage and loss of key [...]

A study of 49 contract broiler farmers under 4 leading integrators in and around Puducherry revealed that the contract is one sided favouring the integrator as the contract stipulates standards for the outputs from the farmer but it does not specify any standards for the inputs the integrator supplies such [...]

This paper investigates the role of social learning in the diffusion of a new agricultural technology in Ghana. We use unique data on farmers’ communication patterns to define each individual’s information neighborhood. Conditional on many potentially confounding variables, we find evidence that farmers adjust their inputs to align with those of [...]

Linking small producers with markets has been identified as one of the major issues in policy and practice in improving livelihoods for millions of poor in the developing world. Small producers have many competitive advantages like lower costs, but they face threats from the demand for standardised products in [...]

Recent years have witnessed a renewed interest in agricultural investment. In many cases, this has translated into large-scale acquisitions of farmland in lower- and middle-income countries. Partly as a result of sustained media attention, these acquisitions have triggered lively if polarised debates about “land grabbing”. Less attention has been paid, [...]

Numerous corporations worldwide source raw materials from developing countries, often not knowing exactly who is producing these commodities. This has been particularly the case in the chocolate and coffee industries. However, consumers in Europe, and especially in Switzerland are increasingly demanding more information on the products they buy, thus motivating corporations [...]