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The purpose of this study is to propose a performance measurement (PM) model for agricultural extension agents. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, management accounting-agricultural extension, the study has three main research objectives: highlight the main concepts to be embedded in a PM model for agricultural extension agents in an agricultural extension organization (RO1); identify main PM components of the proposed PM model for agricultural extension agents (RO2); and investigate empirically the causal relationships in the proposed PM model (RO3).

An interdisciplinary literature review and a proposed PM model for agricultural extension agents are presented (RO1 and RO2). An empirical survey is incorporated, carried out in early 2011 (RO3), to examine three groups, totaling around 274 respondents. Data were collected through personal interviews using structured questionnaire forms. Path analysis technique was applied.

The authors propose a PM model consisting of five components. The five components are: agricultural extension agents’ characteristics, agents’ work attitudes, services provided, use of agricultural extension services and farmers’ satisfaction with agricultural extension services. The overall findings of the empirical surveys were found to validate the suggested causal relations among the components of the model. Findings indicate that 85 per cent of changes in farmers’ satisfaction with services are explained by changes in the preceding variables in the model.

It is, however, important to view this study with a few limitations in mind; for instance, using a survey method (e.g. sampling and the use of questionnaires in data collection); and the constraints associated with the model. That is to say that the components of the model could be further increased to incorporate other aspects of stakeholders, e.g. the economic impact of governmental financial policies on tax and the customs duties on agricultural products.

A Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations agricultural extension reference manual recommends certain purposes for a PM in agricultural extension organizations; interestingly, all these are already embedded in the proposed PM model, which makes it unequivocally a useful PM model for agriculture extension agents in agricultural extension organizations worldwide. Furthermore, the proposed model contributes significantly to agricultural extension practitioners and academics alike. It focuses the attention of agricultural extension organizations on the causal relationships among the model’s components. These components are linked to the agricultural extension organization strategies.

In addition to the practical implications above, the proposed PM model demonstrates the need for placing equal importance on all five components included and setting performance indicator (PI) targets.

The importance of this study emerges from the fact that it is helpful to examine the development and implementation of PM models across various disciplines to enhance understanding. The PM model overcomes the shortcomings in previous PM models of agricultural extension agents’ criteria/models in the agricultural extension literature. It is not merely a theoretically proposed model because the proposed causal relations amongst its variables are empirically investigated. Following management accounting and strategy theories, the authors propose that the relative importance of the attributes of PI in the proposed model differs according to each agricultural extension organization’s strategy, size and organizational structure.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Kent and Taylor's dialogic features are used by agricultural associations in the USA and Germany to engage media.

A content analysis of 51 American Farm Bureau Federation and 18 Deutscher Bauernverband web sites was conducted to evaluate the incorporation of the principles of ease of interface, usefulness, dialogic loop, conservation of visitors, and generation of return visits.

The study found mixed results for the incorporation of Kent and Taylor's five dialogic principles. At the time of the content analysis, these sites failed to provide a solid dialogic loop between the organisation and the visitor, and they did not encourage return visits. This weakens the sites' potential to move past information provision and build lasting relationships with reporters.

The findings of this research project provide benchmark numbers for the presence of the five dialogic principles in the agriculture industry. Further, the findings strengthen the growing evidence of the impact of the principles in various sectors. Previous research has examined how nonprofit social service and activist organisations have incorporated the principles as well as for‐profit organizations. The current results shine light on how other organisations are using their web site to develop relationships with visitors.

Research on agricultural communication indicates that the media increasingly are downplaying the significance of the industry in mainstream news. Scholars have suggested that the agricultural industry is not well versed in media training and media relations. However, the findings of this study indicate that the leading agricultural associations in the USA and Germany are still primarily using their web sites as one‐way information subsidies rather than capitalizing on the interactive nature of the web. By incorporating the five dialogic principles into their web sites, the agricultural communicators will be in a better position to interact with media in a lasting manner rather than simply serving as a source of one‐way information.

Though the dialogic principles have been studied in other settings, this paper examines their use by organisations in multiple countries. Given the increasing globalisation of the agriculture industry, it is vital to understand how this industry communicates with the media given that it has repeatedly complained about media coverage of agricultural issues and the push by the American Farm Bureau to assist other national agricultural associations around the world.

During the past four decades, agriculture and rural development in China has scored a great progress. Organization institution in agriculture is one of the domains with drastic innovations. The purpose of this paper is to map the emergence and evolution of various agricultural organizations in China since 1978. Development status and the trend of agricultural organization system are analyzed. Further, the role of farmer cooperatives is discussed.

Data used in the paper are mainly from statistical yearbooks and documents published by the government including Ministry of Agriculture and Bureau of Industry and Commercial. Both descriptive and deductive analyses are adopted to achieve different analytical purposes.

The vast small-farm sector, co-existence of various types of organizations, and innovation of other organizations will continue and sustain for a long-time period in China. Despite the fast development of modern farmers and various organizations, it is important that traditional farmers participate effectively in modern agriculture. Farmers act collectively via a cooperative in a desirable way, which determines the central position of farmer cooperatives in the agricultural organization system.

This paper is a qualitative analysis on agricultural organizations in China, yet no quantitative estimation regarding the comparison of various organizations is conducted due to insufficient data.

This paper fills the gap of a comprehensive review of the emergence, development status, and trend of agricultural organizations in China.

This study seeks to build a conceptual model of agricultural extension intrapreneurship that discusses the concept and phenomenon of intrapreneurship as well as its prerequisites and outcomes. The proposed model is intended to depict the main factors that affect the phenomena of intrapreneurship within the agricultural extension organizations and the impact of intrapreneurship on agricultural extension organizational outcomes, as well as factors influencing its continuous outcomes.

The paper identifies and describes the existence and past literature on prerequisites, phenomena and outcomes of intrapreneurship in organizations as a basis for analysis and developing an appropriate model of agricultural extension intrapreneurship. This is a conceptual paper selecting targeted scholarly works that provide support for the proposed model.

The paper presents a model of Iranian agricultural extension in which the organizational, behavioral and environmental factors influence intrapreneurship and the construct of intrapreneurship influences organizational outcomes. The paper provides a comprehensive analysis that develops an existing model for a systematic approach to the agricultural extension intrapreneurial process. The proposed model of agricultural extension intrapreneurship joins a growing number of works that explore how intrapreneurship contributes to organizational outcomes in an Iranian agricultural extension organization. It is suggested that the framework may help scholars identify potential strategies of intrapreneurial activity that could help extension organization position intrapreneurship as a vehicle for improving organizational outcomes.

Based on this exploration, new insights about agricultural extension intrapreneurship are developed, practical implications for agricultural extension intrapreneurs on how to approach agricultural extension entrepreneurship more systematically and effectively are presented and opportunities for further research are identified.

China's agricultural production trusteeship is characterized by the organic link between household operation of small-scale peasant economy and agricultural socialized services, which releases agricultural development vitality and promotes agricultural modernization. As one of the agricultural production trusteeship modes, the whole process trusteeship is suitable for the actual situation of China's aging population and labor force transfer. This paper aims to construct an evolutionary game model containing multistakeholder to explore the behavior decisions through numerical simulation and to provide useful suggestions for the formation of a positive and stable trusteeship relationship and the sound development of the whole process trusteeship of agricultural production.

The paper incorporates village committees, service organizations and farmers into the same research framework, selects “guarantee + dividends” as the income distribution method and applies the evolutionary game method to analyze behavioral choices and evolutionary paths of stakeholders. By constructing the expectation function, establishing the replicator dynamic equations and analyzing the tripartite evolutionary stability strategy, the authors explore the factors that affect the stakeholders’ strategy choice and determine asymptotically stable points and stability conditions.

(1) There is a game relationship among village committees, farmers and service organizations in the whole process trusteeship of agricultural production, asymptotically stable points (0,0,1) and (1,1,1) are obtained through calculation. (2) The proportion of stakeholders' strategy choice, the weight of the whole process trusteeship of agricultural production in the performance appraisal of the village committee, the village committee's supervision cost, the village committee's reputation effect and the penalty for false dividends of the service organization will affect the speed at which the curve representing the tripartite relationship approaches two asymptotically stable points.

The countermeasures proposed in the paper have excellent reference value. (1) For areas that have realized the project: Village committees can solve the trusteeship problems exposed in the initial areas and improve farmers' satisfaction with the project. (2) For areas that have not realized the project: Those regions will receive more experience references and enhance their confidence in this project. The limitation of the paper is that it takes the main grain-producing areas in only the three northeastern provinces of China as the research object. The next research object will be extended to the whole country.

This paper propose strategies for realizing the orderly operation of the whole process trusteeship of agricultural production: first, increase the proportion of stakeholders' strategy choices; second, reduce the village committee's supervision cost; third, increase the weight of the whole process trusteeship of agricultural production in the performance appraisal of the village committee; fourth, improve the village committee's reputation effect; fifth, increase the penalty for false dividends of the service organization.

Agricultural production trusteeship is in its initial stage in China. The interest relationships between stakeholders are not yet clear. The paper innovatively applies the evolutionary game method to the research field of the whole process trusteeship of agricultural production. According to conditions in China, based on ensuring the guaranteed income, the paper introduces the dividend income variable and establishes a tripartite game model of village committees, service organization and farmers. The paper provides suggestions for the orderly and healthy development of China's agricultural production trusteeship and provides experience for the operation of other modes of agricultural production trusteeship.

The United Kingdom differs from most of its partners in the European Community in that its farmers generally prefer non co‐operative channels of distribution for their produce. The proportion of farm produce distributed through co‐operatives is considerably smaller than is generally the case in Europe. This paper is concerned with the contribution of co‐operative organisational structure and behaviour to the variations in co‐operative market shares found in European agriculture. It is argued that there is a clear relationship between organisational factors and the market position of the co‐operative sector in each country and that this has implications for the encouragement of co‐operative organisation which is an aim of UK public policy.

Studies concerning Soviet taxation demonstrate a diversity of opinions on the nature of turnover taxes. Four major views on the subject have emerged: (1) turnover taxes are simply a sales (excise) tax on articles' of consumption sold to the Soviet consumer; (2) not all turnover taxes are a sales tax, some of them are a substitute for rent on production of certain industrial materials; (3) in addition to being a sales (excise) tax on consumer goods and rent on some industrial materials, there exists a third type of turnover tax which is levied on agricultural production of the peasantry; (4) turnover taxes are a portion of the surplus product produced in industry and agriculture.

The purpose of this paper is to draw conclusions about China's agricultural integration (CAI) by looking back its processes stage by stage, discussing the problems related to CAI, in order to learn salutary lessons for the future of agricultural development, for the increase in rural income, and especially for the promotion of CAI.

The paper comprises three stages: analyzing the process of CAI from the household responsibility system, to agricultural industrialization, until the stage of CAI led by farmers' co‐operatives; discussing the related practice together with literature; and historically proving that there is no better way to promote CAI than letting it be led by farmers' co‐operatives.

The paper finds that, the development of China's agricultural economic organizations is owing to CAI, and can be studied stage by stage; the process of CAI proves that it needs to be promoted as a new style led by farmers' co‐operative in order to increase rural income; literature review also gives eloquent proof of the above viewpoint; agricultural integration led by farmers' co‐operative should be taken as a better way to upgrade CAI and to increase rural income, for it can decrease the benefit disputes that usually happened in the former type of agricultural industrialization.

The obvious value of the paper is to show, by a historical review, a way to promote CAI and to increase farmers' income. A literature review finds these countermeasures comprehensively, historically, and theoretically. The information about CAI will be beneficial for people who are interested in the topic.

From 2006 to 2016, Brazilian agricultural cooperatives exhibited a sharp increase in sales. Since the operational cycle of these organizations demands a positive net working capital that is usually funded by debt, the authors examine whether this rise in sales was obtained at the cost of the short-term financial sustainability. As a matter of comparison, the authors conduct the same analysis for Brazilian agricultural public traded companies.

The authors employ the dynamic analysis of working capital method to measure the short-term financial sustainability of these organizations.

The authors find that the expansion of net working capital caused by the growth of the revenues of the sampled cooperatives was mostly funded by short-term debt, which rose by 31% in annualized terms. The authors also document that around 60% of these firms displayed a current capital structure that can be considered risky in terms of indebtedness, and that the majority of firms exhibited a non-sustainable growth in the period, what contrasts with the performance presented by Brazilian agricultural publicly traded companies, since only 16% of the firms from this group have shown a non-sustainable growth. This distinction seems to be explained by the lower capacity of agricultural cooperatives to provide resources from their operations.

The authors investigate the short-term financial sustainability of a unique dataset of 65 Brazilian agricultural cooperatives and provide insight for researchers analyzing the dual nature of these firms.

Leadership is a concept that has always been a major component of Colleges of Agriculture. Undergraduate student have numerous opportunities to develop their leadership skills and abilities though formal coursework, collegiate organizations, and personal leadership activities. This ethnographic qualitative research study investigated the leadership characteristics of outstanding seniors in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) at The Ohio State University. The study utilized a semi-structured interview methodology. The objectives of the study were to 1) Determine the leadership development experiences of the outstanding seniors prior to their enrolling in college, 2) Identify the leadership development activities in which they participated during their undergraduate studies, 3) Identify their self-perceived strengths, weaknesses, and leadership influences, 4) Identify the personal and professional leadership goals. Results indicate that the outstanding seniors had significant leadership development experiences in FFA and 4-H while in high school. They continued to participate in leadership activities in dozens of different collegiate organizations, both within and outside of the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences. The outstanding seniors had a passionate belief in their own leadership ability, believed strongly in servant leadership, and used their leadership to the benefit of the organizations in which they were members.