Search results

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the domestic agriculture’s contribution to food security in the case of missing imports of food and feed to the food supplies of the country.

This paper uses the Decision Support System for food Security Strategy and Supply Management (DSS-ESSA) to simulate whether a country with as low a level of self-sufficiency (around 60 per cent) as Switzerland would theoretically be capable of supplying its own population with a sufficient quantity of domestically produced food. The authors try to estimate the short-term and long-term impacts of the missing imports of food and feed on the energy supply in Switzerland.

Findings are summarised as follows. Starting with the long-term impact, the results show that in the long-term an energy supply of 2,340 kcal/person/day would be possible if the appropriate available cultivated area and optimised production existed. However, in the short-time, the potential and the time required to adapt and expand agricultural production depends primarily on the crop-rotation land available and on the existing infrastructure.

In the present version of DSS-ESSA no economic and environmental module has been integrated.

The current model version has been funded by the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture and aims at supporting Swiss policy-makers to guide changes. Numerous additional data such as technical production contexts are regularly checked by experts.

The purpose of this paper is to identify those product characteristics that are of importance to consumers of organic food in Switzerland.

In order to identify important organic product characteristics, this study applies a Generalized Linear Model using a six-year sample of Swiss household data distinguishing between organic and conventional products at the product level.

The analysis reveals three product-related dimensions of importance. First, Swiss consumers prefer unprocessed organic products over highly processed ones suggesting that communicating potential benefits of organic food is more promising for unprocessed products. Second, organic consumers are reluctant to buy products with high price premiums. Third, Swiss consumers prefer domestically produced organic products over imported ones.

The results imply that supporting organic agriculture in Switzerland is still promising from a policy and a marketing perspective as long as the organic price premium is not too high.

This paper presents results regarding the determinants of the organic market share in Switzerland. They give a first understanding of which product characteristics determine organic market shares. From a policy as well as from a marketing perspective a further investigation at the household level is promising in order to understand and respond to the needs and expectations of Swiss consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the importance of the “organic” attribute for wine in relation to other attributes and to identify the most important determinants as far as the consumption of organic wine is concerned.

A survey based on interviews with 404 Swiss wine drinkers was conducted. The data were evaluated by means of conjoint and regression analyses.

The “organic” attribute was more important than the colour of the wine but less important than the price and the country of origin, foreign French wine being preferred to local Swiss wine. Urban and female consumers were relatively likely to consume organic wine, as were consumers who perceive organic wine as being healthy.

Marketing for organic wine in well‐developed markets should focus on the argument of image and health. Urban female consumers are the most important target group.

The paper presents the first results on the important attributes for marketing organic wine in developed organic food markets.

The paper examines the nexus between agricultural exports and the performance of agricultural firms in Malaysia.

The dynamic linkage is tested by using system GMM models and the period ranges from 2002 to 2016.

The results indicate that agricultural exports affect performance positively. However, agricultural raw materials have no significant impact on performance.

The agricultural exports in relation to sectoral performance needs to be considered in the future.

The findings are important for policymakers to formulate policies that promote the agricultural sector. To put it differently, the policies may encourage investments in this sector. Also, the findings have substantial academic implications, bridging the gap between theory and empirical literature in the agricultural sector.

This work highlights the agricultural exports and their impacts on a firm's performance.

Consumers' concerns about the environmental impacts of food production have been increasing over the last years, and several certification systems for environment-friendly food products have been created. This research investigates wine consumers' preferences for a certification that guarantees the use of agricultural practices that better protect the biodiversity in the vineyard during the production of grapes.

Using a choice experiment, we investigate consumer preferences and willingness to pay for biodiversity-friendly wines on a sample of 334 wine consumers. The experiment was carried out by direct interviews at a wine-tasting event in an Italian winery located in the Franciacorta area, in northern Italy. A between-subject design and two different questionnaires were used, one presenting the Brut bottle and one the Satén bottle.

Estimates from a mixed logit model reveal that consumers are generally willing to pay a higher price for biodiversity-friendly wines, but they have stronger preferences for organic certification and quality indications. When consumers perceive a specific product as having high quality, i.e. Satèn, they might be less willing to pay for further environment-friendly certifications. Moreover, preferences depend on sociodemographic and attitudinal variables such as gender, wine consumption frequency, wine education and knowledge degree of the labels.

This paper broadens the knowledge about consumer preferences and willingness to pay for biodiversity-friendly wines, focusing on a specific market segment of Italian sparkling wines.

The purpose of this paper is to examine numerically the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) free convection and thermal radiation heat transfer of single walled carbon nanotubes-water nanofluid within T-inverted shaped corrugated cavity comprising porous media including uniform heat source/sink for solar energy power plants applications.

The two-dimensional numerical simulation is performed by drawing on Comsol Multiphysics program, based on the finite element process.

The important results obtained show that increasing numbers of Rayleigh and Darcy and the parameter of radiation enhance the flow of convection heat. Furthermore, by increasing the corrugation height, the convection flow increases, but it decreases with the multiplication of the corrugation height. The use of a flat cavity provides better output than a corrugated cavity.

The role of surface corrugation parameters on the efficiency of free convection and heat transfer of thermal radiation within the porous media containing the T-inverted corrugated cavity including uniform heat source/sink under the impact of Lorentz forces has never been explored. A contrast is also established between a flat cavity and a corrugated one.

In accounting, several studied Arab countries are keen to acquire the dominant Western thinking categories that justify and normalize the exerted domination, especially when it comes to globalized practices. This paper aims to challenge this assumption by examining the dynamics of globalization and its effects through new theoretical perspectives and through new empirical terrain.

It builds on the concept of “globalization from below”, which emerges from the network of individual development of daily routines, systems and practices, far from international institutions pressure. It uses social representation theory to inform the centrality of a particular social group. The study uses a survey, which was on a sample group of 214 Tunisian public accountants and uses the hierarchical evocation method and an attitudinal scale.

The results are twofold: first, Tunisian public accounts lack a stable and common understanding to globalization; second, there are ambivalent positive/negative attitudes towards globalization among accounting professionals.

The dynamic Tunisian context, along with the absence of a stable collective meaning to the concept of globalization among accountants, shows the complexity of such cases, vacillating between international institutions’ domination and the emergence of emancipatory accounting practices inspired by and developed for local socioeconomic entities, if supported by specific factors.