The recent rises in food prices represent the ‘tip of the iceberg’ and a ‘canary in the mine’ moment for world agriculture. They are underlain by a continuing race to the bottom and by speculative processes whereby systems of resource production and exploitation are continuing to rely upon ‘infinite supply’ assumptions and narrow technological solutions to world hunger. It is argued here that t...

today, the global business environment compels enterprises to consider rest of the world in their competitive strategy analysis where firms ignore external factors such as economic trends, competitive positions or technology advancement in other countries. while going truly global with supply chain management, a company develops product in the united states, produce in india and trade in europe...

Our main purpose is to discuss how prospects for China’s agri-food sector critically depend on the efficiency, commercial orientation, and responsiveness of China’s transportation system and intermediaries in the agri-food value chain. To provide context, we first examine the role that demographics play as a driver of growth and change in China’s agri-food sector and the economy at large. Two m...

In Japan, greenhouse gas emissions from rice production, especially CH4 emissions in rice paddy fields, are the primary contributors to global warming from agriculture. When prolonged midseason drainage for mitigating CH4 emissions from rice paddy fields is practiced with environmentally friendly rice production based on reduced use of synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers, Japanese ric...

Types of rural-urban gaps exist and seem expand in China, although agriculture and rural lives have obtained significant enhancement since the “opening and reforming” policy started in 1980. Amongst these gaps, digital gap is critical itself, and may widen other gaps. How to promote agricultural informationization (agri-informationization) effectively and efficiently is a great challenge to Chi...

In the past three decades, the seed sector has experienced, and is now again experiencing, corporate concentration trends. The fallout of this consolidation is the subject of numerous concerns. However, the seed sector is rather poorly understood. Thus, it is useful to understand it better and to investigate the potential impact on the agri-food chain of the trend toward increased corporate con...

During October, November and December 2011 (when highest sales of Agri-Hub fresh produce are observed), irrigation water, compost, lettuce and spinach sampled from four different farmer cooperatives supplying the local Agri-Hub in uMbumbulu (KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) were analyzed monthly for the presence of total and fecal coliforms and Escherichia coli using the most probable number (MPN) ...

Over the past twenty years, agricultural biotechnologies have generated chronically unresolved political controversies. The standard tool of risk assessment has proven to be highly limited in its ability to address the panoply of concerns that exist about these hybrid techno/organisms. It has also failed to account for both the conceptual and material networks of relations agricultural biotechn...

The food system is facing unprecedented pressure from environmental change exacerbated by the expansion of agri-food corporations that are consolidating their power in the global food chain. Although Africa missed the Green Revolution and the wave of supermarket expansion that hit the West and then spread to Asia and Latin America, this is unlikely to continue. With a large proportion of sub-Sa...