The world food and financial crises threaten to undermine the real incomes of urban consumers in eastern and southern Africa. This study investigates patterns in staple food prices, wage rates, and marketing margins for urban consumers in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia between 1993 and 2009. There is high correlation among wage rate series for various government and private sector catego...

The Almond Marketing Or­ der, established in 1950, pro­ vides the industry with various tools to influence the demand and supply of almonds with the goal of increasing grower returns. Among its provisions, the Order authorizes the industry to undertake advertising and promotion. Funds for this purpose are collected through an assessment on almond handlers. The Order allows for (and programs hav...

In recent years, consumer interest in local specialty crops (fruits, vegetables and ornamentals) has increased sharply. Consumers want to know how and where food is produced and are seeking a closer relationship with farmers. Although sales of locally grown food still account for only a small share of total domestic food sales, this is believed to be one of the fastest growing segments of U.S. ...

Carnation is an important traded crop in many countries. Postharvest senescence is a major limitation to the marketing of many species of cut flowers and considerable effort has been devoted to developing postharvest treatments to extend the marketing period. The split-plot experiment was executed based on two factors randomized complete block design with three replications to examine the effec...

The purpose of this paper is to assess the gaps in the adoption of crop insurance in Thailand and suggest possible solutions relating to policy support and framework, implementation mechanisms, technology adoption, and awareness amongst farmers. The methodology includes a literature review, interaction with officials, rice experts and insurance experts, and discussion with farmers. A study was ...

African oil palm has the highest productivity amongst cultivated oleaginous crops. Species can constitute a single crop capable to fulfill the growing global demand for vegetable oils, which is estimated to reach 240 million tons by 2050. Two types of vegetable oil are extracted from the palm fruit on commercial scale. The crude palm oil and kernel palm oil have different fatty acid profiles, w...

Biotechnology has been practiced by man since plants and animals were first domesticated thousands of years ago. Biotechnology in its most simplistic sense is the genetic modification of living organisms. Hence, all crop varieties grown today, including soybean, have had their DNA manipulated—the essence of biotechnology. More recently, biotechnology implies a deliberate manipulation of the DNA...