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This study acclaims the social entrepreneurship based on cow rearing experiential tourism in Himachal Pradesh. This study aims to illustrate the role of indigenous cows in the Indian society, especially in the Northern Mountain regions by taking Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh as an exemplar. This study highlights the relevance of experiential tourism that elucidates on the basis of cow tourism pertaining to health, mental and spiritual rejuvenation. Lastly, the paper is an attempt to integrate social entrepreneurship and cow tourism highlighting the relevance of experiential economy in empowering the local community.

The case study elucidates on the whence of Swadeshi Kamdhenu Gaushala (SKG), an initiative of Mr Rishi Dogra and Mr Rajesh Dogra, their immaculate micro-management and its benefits to the local community. It highlights how SKG is uplifting the socio-economic standards of the local villagers and providing a distinctive learning experience of indigenous knowledge to visitors. This study is qualitative in nature that uses narrative analysis of secondary data to recognise the importance of indigenous Indian cows, and case study analysis of interviews of SKG proprietors to understand the micro-management, production of organic products and community engagement in their social entrepreneurship.

The SKG is not only helping the local community in their livelihood but also creating value and positioning to the place on the tourist map. This study sheds some light on the importance of cow products in sectors such as agriculture, green energy and for human health and nutrition. The study also crystallizes the challenges faced by the cow rearers, at last the paper sorted out the benefits of cow tourism and how it can result in community empowerment and development.

The case study on SKG helps us in understanding the importance of social entrepreneurs in community empowerment and also the intervention of tourism in the sector that can bring new and different vertical to the tourism industry with experiential learning of the tourist, which results in knowledge sharing about the benefits of Indian cows and helps in creating and placing such destinations on tourist maps. This study attempts towards contributing to the existing knowledge, highlighting the benefits of social entrepreneurship and cow tourism for the society in general and local community in particular.

The purpose of this paper was to assess the economic impact of investment in different animal welfare–enhancing flooring solutions in Swedish dairy farming.

The authors developed a bio-economic model and used stochastic partial budgeting approach to simulate the economic consequences of enhancing solid and slatted concrete floors with soft rubber covering.

The findings highlight that keeping herds on solid and slatted concrete floor surfaces with soft rubber coverings is a profitable solution, compared with keeping herds on solid and slatted concrete floors without a soft covering. The profit per cow when kept on a solid concrete floor with soft rubber covering increased by 13%–16% depending on the breed.

Promoting farm investments such as improvement in flooring solution, which have both economic and animal welfare incentives, is a potential way of promoting sustainable dairy production. Farmers may make investments in improved floors, resulting in enhanced animal welfare and economic outcomes necessary for sustaining dairy production.

This literature review indicated that the economic impact of investment in specific types of floor improvement solutions, investment costs and financial outcomes have received little attention. This study provides insights needed for a more informed decision-making process when selecting optimal flooring solutions for new and renovated barns that improve both animal welfare and ease the burden on farmers and public financial support.

Upon completion of this case study, students should be able to apply lessons learned in core readings, analysis and discussion to a specific case study dealing with a current, real-world situation, specifically: critically assess Livestock Wealth’s case facts and present and justify their point of view – based on attentive reading, critical analysis and engagement – about the company; use a range of strategic tools such as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis, PESTLE analysis and the Ansoff matrix to thoroughly evaluate Livestock Wealth’s internal and external business environment for developing strategic options for business growth and improvements to marketing strategy; use strategic thinking to develop a range of creative solutions to guide the company’s business growth and improvements to marketing strategy; and assess their own growth and development in terms of personal preparation and organisation, collaboration, critical thinking, decision-making skills, participation and problem-solving.

By February 2022, Ntuthuko Shezi, the founder and chief executive officer of Livestock Wealth, had turned his idea of “crowd farming”, which enables anyone to invest in living farm assets and earn a profit at harvest, into a full-fledged business that was creating wealth for both investors and farmers. Underpinning this case study is Shezi’s vision of an African continent where there is “no ground that is not planted with something of value”, local economies are created in those areas, communities are wealthy, there is abundance, there is money for children to attend school and ultimately where “cows (and agricultural produce in general) are seen as money”. Shezi had grown up in a rural area with grandparents who owned a couple of cows, realizing that the cows were the bedrock of the family’s finances. Describing his business, he says, “Cattle are like a walking bank, and we see ourselves as the bank of the future, where every person who owns a cow can access financial services through Livestock Wealth, just like it has always been in Africa.” This case study describes the two key decisions that Shezi needed to make – what direction to take in terms of business growth and how to improve his marketing strategy (with a limited budget) to attract sufficient investment into Livestock Wealth to make his dreams a reality.

This case study is suitable for use for a post-graduate diploma in business, master of business administration or master’s in management.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into how management accountants can become relevant business partners out of respect for existing locally developed accounts of economic performance for decision-making.

The paper is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with local business actors, in this case, families from seven financially successful Danish dairy farms. The casework and the analysis have been informed by pragmatic constructivism.

The local business actors do not use the official accounting system for ongoing cost-management-related decision-making. Instead, they use several epistemic methods that include locally developed decision models, experiences, rules of thumb and intuition. The farmers use these vernacular accountings to compensate for the cost management illusion that the formal accounting system tends to create. What the study suggests is that when management accountants engage as business partners, they are likely to enter a space where accounting is already present.

This paper argues that local business actors practice epistemic methods where they develop and use vernacular accountings to support their managerial practice, also in the absence of a professional management accountant. These vernacular accountings may lead the local actors into an illusion because the vernacular accountings do not necessarily have an inherent economic logic and theoretical reliability. The role of the management accountant in such a setting is hence to understand, support and advance local epistemic methods. Becoming a business partner requires a combination of management accounting analytical skills and a sense of empathy and sensitivity regarding what is already at play and how this can become an object of discussion without violating the values of the other.

Beginning Farmer and Rancher programs are available for operators with ten years of experience or less on any farm. These programs support farmers who are starting operations, often without an initial asset allocation. However, some beginning farmers acquire operations that are already established, with substantial assets in place. The authors investigate whether a profitability gap exists between beginning farmers entering the industry ex novo and those operating a preexisting operation and if so, what factors contribute to the gap.

The authors utilize the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition to determine what drives financial differences between first-generation beginning farmers, second-generation beginning farmers and established farmers using a unique farm-level panel dataset from 1997 to 2021.

Results indicate that first- and second-generation beginning farmers have similar operating profit margins, but first-generation beginning farmers have a statistically higher rate of return on assets than second-generation beginning farmers. Established farmers outperform second-generation beginning farmers on both the operating profit margin and rate of return on assets. These results suggest that economic viability for beginning farmers differs depending upon the initial status of their operation, suggesting that heterogenous policies may be more impactful in supporting various pathways to enter agriculture.

This analysis is the first to identify beginning farmers that enter the industry without an asset base and those that take over a principal operator role on an established farm through an assumed farm transition. The authors quantify differences in financial performance using detailed accrual-based financial data that tracks farms over time in one dataset.

This paper aims to quantify the loss (or leakage) of organic cattle to conventional value chains in Ireland and assess its economic and environmental impacts.

The paper adopts a Bio-economy Input-Output (BIO) model, a quantitative economic model representing the interdependencies between different sectors of the economy, to assess the economic and environmental impacts of organic leakage in the Irish beef sector.

The study reveals that 17% of organic cattle aged under 1 year old leave the organic value chain, leaking to the conventional market as a result of imbalances in the development of the beef value chain. The economic cost of this organic leakage is 5.66 million euros. Leakage also has environmental effects because of changes in lifecycle methane and nitrogen emissions based on longer finishing times on organic farms and chemical fertilisers applied on conventional farms. The organic leakage results in a reduction of 82 tons of methane emission and 52 additional tons of nitrogen emission, which leads to 11,484 tons of net global warming potential (GWP) for a 100-year time horizon.

Because of data availability, the research focussed on the baseline year 2015, which had national data available for disaggregation in Ireland. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to assess the economic and environmental impacts when more recent data are available and to analyse the change in the impacts over the years.

This study contributes to the discussion on organic conversion and provides valuable insights for stakeholders, especially policymakers, for the design of future organic schemes.

This is the first paper to assess organic leakage in the beef sector.

This paper analyses children's experiences of school or family visits to Hare Krishna eco-farms in Europe. The article evaluates the extent to which these encounters enable retention and recollection of memories and, consequently, trigger change towards more sustainable behaviour.

Participatory research, qualitative observations and theories of childhood memory are used to explore the nature of children's environmental encounters on Hare Krishna eco-tours.

Findings reveal that Krishna eco-tours offer a conducive environment for cerebral registering and future reminiscing through the following components: experiential learning of sustainable practices which are radically different to mainstream alternatives, sensory experiences, nature play and entertainment and freedom from everyday constraints.

The emerging literature on children's eco-tourism has largely focussed on market-related aspects and farmers' needs. In contrast, the authors’ conceptual framework, based on contemporary research in childhood memories, offers a tool to evaluate the impacts of eco-tourism from a more holistic perspective.