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The purpose of this research is to study the Colombian avocado export industry, identify key insights associated with creating and sustaining the avocado value chain, and to understand the impact of the public policies affecting this industry.

The approach consists of two case studies to shed light on the opportunities and challenges of developing a sustainable avocado value chain in Colombia. One case deals with a vertically integrated business (Arcángel Miguel) while the other focuses on an association of small growers (Asohass). The analysis was informed by a series of interviews with key actors along the avocado supply chain to uncover the business strategies to move avocados to destination markets. The authors compare and contrast approaches to business development, international expansion, and role of public policies.

The authors found that the strategies followed by these organizations differ in means but aim for the same objective: maximize profits, improve environmental performance, and enhance the social wellbeing of growers. The authors found that each type of business model requires distinct public policies to succeed and different strategies to appropriately allocate efforts. The findings are relevant to other high-value crops and other Latin American countries with similar geographical and social characteristics.

These insights underscore the need of public policies tailored to the specific needs of the different actors in the value chain. The current emphasis on certifications and export markets works well for large agribusinesses, but smallholder growers need policies tailored to new investments in physical, human, and social capital.

This study contributes to the literature on avocado value chains in Latin America, emphasizing the challenges faced by the emergent Colombia avocado sector, a country that only began exporting this commodity in 2010.

Contract farming (CF) is seen as a tool for creating new market opportunities hence increasing incomes for smallholder farmers. Critics, however, argue that CF is likely to pass risks to small scale farmers, thus favouring large scale farmers at the expense of smallholder farmers. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of CF on smallholder farmers’ income using a case study of avocado farmers in Kandara district in Kenya.

The study uses data collected from 100 smallholder avocado farmers in Kandara district in Kenya and employs an instrumental variable model (Probit-2SLS) to control for endogeneity in participation in the contract and examine the effect of CF on household, farm and avocado income.

The results indicate that participation in CF is not sufficient to improve household, farm and avocado income. Question remains regarding efficient implementation of CF arrangements to promote spill over effects on other household enterprises.

The research was carried out using farmers in Kandara district in Kenya as a case study, findings might therefore not reflect the status of CF in all countries.

The paper contributes to the growing debate on the effect of value chain upgrading strategies such as contracting on smallholder farmers’ welfare. The form of contracting studied in this paper differs from the standard contracts in that the key stakeholders (producers) are loosely enjoined in the contract through officials of their groups.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of transactional costs on smallholder avocado farmers’ participation in the export market and the extent of participation in Murang’a County, Kenya.

Data was collected from 384 avocado farmers in Murang’a County, following stratified sampling. The Heckman two-stage model was used for analysis.

Results showed that the cost of information search was an important variable that impedes smallholders’ participation in export marketing while harvesting costs inhibits the extent of participation in export marketing.

This study used data at the farm level. Therefore, insights on transaction costs among other marketing agents in the export market value chain would be an issue for future studies.

Following the debate on transaction costs and market participation among farmers in Sub-Sahara Africa, this paper models transactional costs and export market participation among avocado smallholders and measures the extent of participation with the inclusion of harvesting costs, negotiation costs, monitoring costs and information search costs that are not common in previous studies, thus contributing to the development of literature.

Not many researchers have attempted to numerically quantify a supply chain’s degree of leanness or agility. Although focusing predominantly on food, the purpose of this paper is to propose a simple and universal methodology to quantify the degrees of leanness and agility at any point within any supply chain.

Daily processing capacities of stochastic model runs and real supply chain data were projected onto a standardized Euclidean surface. Indexes that calculate, amongst others, the agility, leanness, baseline production and ceiling conditions were derived.

The indexes were often well correlated across the various supply chains. Leanness correlates negatively with agility, as can be expected, however, these attributes do not stand opposed to each other. Most supply chains seem to exhibit both lean and agile attributes simultaneously. Sugar, various types of tomatoes, avocado and onion supply chains are discussed and compared. Although a large amount of data were analysed, there exists an opportunity to widen this study significantly.

This paper presents a unique and simple approach to quantify the degree of supply chain leanness and agility. Although these terms are often used, only a few authors have made attempts to quantify these attributes and in most cases the approaches are relatively cumbersome. The relatively simple indexes create an opportunity for supply chain management to measure, evaluate and communicate their strategies along the supply chain and between different chains.

The paper seeks to examine briefly the economic drivers of the past, how those drivers have changed, and how business and government leaders need to respond by transforming their organizations into knowledge‐based enterprises.

The approach applies the principles of classical economic theory, which were grounded primarily in the valuation of tangible goods, to an economy in which intangible goods, such as information and knowledge, are the predominant forms of capital.

The perishability of intangible goods is accelerating, and is further exacerbated by increased globalization. Valuation‐based theories of money and pricing, which have been overlooked in the past, have resurfaced, and must be understood and practised by business and government leaders alike. In response to these challenges, organizations must design and implement systems which support fast learning and rapid innovation. These new systems are called “knowledge factories”.

The major shifts in the economy are not readily visible on the surface. In order to compete in a flat world, business and government leaders must revisit classical economic theory and understand how to apply it to today's knowledge economy. For example, in the past, talent moved to where it was treated best. Now, the knowledge workforce lives where it chooses, and much of the work comes to them. This has significant human capital and supply chain consequences.

There are many positive outcomes, not the least of which is a more robust economy that takes full advantage of globalization, possibly to the point of approaching a system of near‐perfect competition. With the eventuality of bringing six billion minds to bear on solving complex problems, the potential exists for a greatly improved lifestyle, continued explosive growth in human knowledge, and increased prosperity, especially for those at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

This study aims to assess the oxidative stability of avocado oil (AO) at various temperatures, using butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) as an artificial antioxidant and different concentrations of ultrasonic extract of Chlorella vulgaris.

Extracts of C. vulgaris were obtained using four solvents: water, acetone, ethanol and 80% ethanol-aqueous. Standard techniques were used to conduct qualitative phytochemical screening of the extracts. The extracted samples were analyzed for total phenolics, total flavonoids, antioxidant activity and phenolic compound fractionation. Some physicochemical parameters of AO treated with various concentrations of C. vulgaris ultrasonic extract compared to a 200 ppm BHT and exposed to different temperatures were measured.

The highest phenolic, flavonoids content and antioxidant activity was achieved by 80% ethanolic extract of C. vulgaris . The results showed that exposure of AO to high temperatures led to significant changes in the oil's physicochemical properties. These changes increased as the temperature increased. On the other hand, adding 80% ethanolic extract of C. vulgaris into AO reduced the effect of heat treatment on the change in physicochemical properties.

Adding 80% ethanolic extract of C. vulgaris into AO can potentially reduce the impact of heat treatment on the alteration of physicochemical properties.

Supply chain risks (SCRs) do not work in isolation and have impact both on each member of a chain and the performance of the entire supply chain. The purpose of this paper is to quantitatively assess the impact of dynamic risk propagation within and between integrated firms in global fresh produce supply chains.

A risk propagation ontology-based Bayesian network (BN) model was developed to measure dynamic SCR propagation. The proposed model was applied to a two-tier Australia-China table grape supply chain (ACTGSC) featured with an upstream Australian integrated grower and exporter and a downstream Chinese integrated importer and online retailer.

An ontology-based BN can be generated to accurately represent the risk domain of interest using the knowledge and inference capabilities inherent in a risk propagation ontology. In addition, the analyses revealed that supply discontinuity, product inconsistency and/or delivery delay originating in the upstream firm can propagate to increase the downstream firm’s customer value risk and business performance risk.

The work was conducted in an Australian-China table grape supply chain, so results are only product chain-specific in nature. Additionally, only two state values were considered for all nodes in the model, and finally, while the proposed methodology does provide a large-scale risk network map, it may not be appropriate for a large supply chain network as it only follows the process flow of a single supply chain.

This study supports the backward-looking traceability of risk root causes through the ACTGSC and the forward-looking prediction of risk propagation to key risk performance measures.

The methodology used in this paper provides an evidence-based decision-making capability as part of a system-wide risk management approach and fosters collaborative SCR management, which can yield numerous societal benefits.

The proposed methodology addresses the challenges in using a knowledge-based approach to develop a BN model, particularly with a large-scale model and integrates risk and performance for a holistic risk propagation assessment. The combination of modelling approaches to address the issue is unique.

To provide an advanced product definition methodology based on quality function deployment (QFD) principles to identify minimize the risks of project failures due to failure to align with the voice of the business. The methodology was developed by reviewing current design product definition and QFD tools and then applied to a number of industry‐based design projects in academia as well as an in‐depth case study at one industry organization. The tool has been well accepted for its ease and approach in both industry and academic environments and already used to help guide project management. The methodology has only been applied to limited projects in industry and advancements and improvements are still being made. A new simple but powerful tool based on QFD principles that can be readily applied to a number of current design projects; in addition, it demonstrates how the QFD method can be expanded to non‐traditional domains and systems. This paper not only identifies current product development issues but also explores a practical and proven solution to error‐proof the design process.

Mexico has an economic dynamic mostly associated with low added value sectors; regions of Guerrero and Michoacan highlight at national and even international levels in the agri-food production, however, they present substantial lags in their development and competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the innovation policy in the agri-food sector of these regions through its regulations and local policy.

The present work has a qualitative approach through a case study with the treatment of units of analysis (UA), in which innovation policy in the agri-food sector as main UA, whose sources of interpretation have been direct observation and documentary sources such as laws and the guiding instruments of the regional public policy on innovation and the agri-food sector.

This paper identifies severe institutional weaknesses, a lack of incentives and structures for generating certainty and innovation capabilities in the agri-food sector. Both regions have weak and poorly articulated institutions in their innovation policy, with few incentives and scarcely defined property rights tending to increase uncertainty among the actors participating in the agri-food sector, although the economic dynamics of both regions is mostly associated with that sector, therefore, the low development and lack of competitiveness are a direct consequence of a minimum priority of innovation policy.

Our research is useful for the academic sphere by contributing to applied knowledge on the implications of innovation policy at the sectoral level on the development and competitiveness of regions, particularly in an emerging country such as Mexico, allowing to generate bridges gaps between theory and practice.

The main contribution is for policymakers, allowing them to compare and facilitate a better design of regulatory and public policy instruments that enable them to address and enhance economic vocations through innovation for regional development.

The research focuses on a debate at the regional level on the institutional limitations of promoting innovation through public policy. This study approaches economic and political processes having as empirical evidence of two undeveloped Mexican regions that stand out internationally in agri-food production. These regions have sectoral dynamics inserted in global value chains but have not achieved a local articulation, which has negatively affected their competitiveness and development. The cases of Guerrero and Michoacan are examples of regions like many others, which present diverse institutional weaknesses and lack of incentives associated with innovation policy that limit the development and articulation of their territorial capabilities.

Reviews the UK market for exotic fruit and vegetable products with detailed consideration of the mango, papaya, avocado and pineapple markets. Concludes that there are opportunities for growth in this market despite infrequent. not regular. purchasing and the consumer′s perception of the products as expensive and a risk. Risk can be reduced by attention to quality at point of sale – ripe and ready to eat. Recommends common marketing strategies for an extending range of products with supermarkets the best distribution channels.