The “fruit trade chain” is a commonly accepted term used in the industry to describe the system of trading fresh fruit. The fruit trade chain includes procurement, production, packaging, shipment and delivery to the consumer. Within this chain, numerous components are involved: picking,...

During the last decades, the variable agricultural commodity prices and the increasing producer and consumer prices illustrated the need for more transparency about the pricing of food products in the European food system. Therefore, the European Commission launched in 2009 a public tool, the...

The researh aims at explaining stock performance of processing companies in function of commodity performance on commodity markets. The results show that stock prices of food companies do not significantly depend on agricultural market prices. So, risks of agricultural market price volatility...

In Germany, productivity gains and other factors induce structural changes in agriculture since decades. While the number of farms decreases simultaneously average farm sizes with respect to area and herd sizes increases. Conflicts between agricultural reality and society’s perception will...

Economic efficiency is a key issue for economic research and for policy design, and certainly for food security challenges. In the food system dynamics the understanding of changes and trends is crucial to improve our capacity in dealing with sustainable development and quality of life...

This paper investigates the effect of information flow on corn futures price variability for the period January 2004 -July 2011. The theoretical framework is the Mixture Distribution Hypothesis, that posits a joint dependence of return volatility and information. The main contribution of this...

The role of foreign direct investment and intellectual property rights in economic development is discussed widely in the literature. However, an integrating framework is missing to assess the role of FDI and IPR for agricultural development. This paper establishes a framework to assess the role...

This paper investigates the opportunities for farmers to produce for local consumers, based on a case study in the Dutch horticulture sector. Main requirements for the set-up of a local chain of supply chain actors are investigated. Producer requirements are added value, availability of time,...

The market of local and organic food is still a niche market in the USA, despite its strong growth rates. Both offer consumers an alternative to a globalized anonymous food supply chain. Yet local food and organic food seem to be overlapping and to some degree competing food concepts. While the...