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Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured supply chain practices, lack of awareness of the implications of the sustainability concept and failure to recycle poultry wastes. The current research thus attempts to develop an integrated supply chain model in the context of poultry industry in Bangladesh. The study considers both sustainability and supply chain issues in order to incorporate them in the poultry supply chain. By placing the forward and reverse supply chains in a single framework, existing problems can be resolved to gain economic, social and environmental benefits, which will be more sustainable than the present practices.

The theoretical underpinning of this research is ‘sustainability’ and the ‘supply chain processes’ in order to examine possible improvements in the poultry production process along with waste management. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and ‘design science’ methods with the support of system dynamics (SD) and the case study methods. Initially, a mental model is developed followed by the causal loop diagram based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observation techniques. The causal model helps to understand the linkages between the associated variables for each issue. Finally, the causal loop diagram is transformed into a stock and flow (quantitative) model, which is a prerequisite for SD-based simulation modelling. A decision support system (DSS) is then developed to analyse the complex decision-making process along the supply chains.

The findings reveal that integration of the supply chain can bring economic, social and environmental sustainability along with a structured production process. It is also observed that the poultry industry can apply the model outcomes in the real-life practices with minor adjustments. This present research has both theoretical and practical implications. The proposed model’s unique characteristics in mitigating the existing problems are supported by the sustainability and supply chain theories. As for practical implications, the poultry industry in Bangladesh can follow the proposed supply chain structure (as par the research model) and test various policies via simulation prior to its application. Positive outcomes of the simulation study may provide enough confidence to implement the desired changes within the industry and their supply chain networks.

The purpose of this paper is to carry out an empirical investigation of the role of various factors such as economics, social, marketing, cultivation and government in adoption of organic farming. Further, this study examines the factors that influence farmers’ choice of adopting organic farming, based on their demographic classification such as education level, farm size, farming experiences and land ownership of the organic farmers.

To address the research objectives, the primary data were collected with the help of a structured questionnaire from 200 respondents. In this study, the QUAL–QUAN sequence of mixed method design was used. Four focus groups were conducted to identify the factors of organic farming adoption. Further, multinomial regression analysis was applied to analyze the differential impact of these factors in relation to the farmers’ demographic classification.

The study found five major factors that affect the adoption of organic farming (economic, social, marketing, cultivation, government policy) in India. The study also observed that marketing and government policy factors were most crucial in influencing all types of farmers irrespective of their educational level. The farmers with more farming experience were more concerned about social factors. Similarly, the farmers using lease farms were found to be concerned about the economic viability of organic farming.

This study suggests that without government support, the adoption of organic agriculture seems to be a highly challenging task in a situation, where majority of the farmers fall under the small and marginal category. Hence, to promote organic farming in a developing country like India, the government has to invest more in schemes where farmers should get exclusive training and support to strengthen their intention behind the adoption of the organic farming.

Based on the collective insights from the studies, the different stakeholders with interest in organic agriculture may frame necessary strategies to promote organic farming.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the environmental performance of intensive farming and estimate agrochemical waste in physical and monetary terms. The intensive farming provides adverse impacts including health and environmental quality associated with the use of agrochemicals.

This study uses a theory of environmental efficiency that measures how efficient the farm uses agrochemical inputs. The efficiency was estimated using a set of farm-level data of intensive farming that use agrochemicals. Data were compiled from a survey of randomly selected 240 farmers who operated intensive farming in three regions of Java in 2014.

The results show that the performance of intensive farming was low. This condition caused agrochemical waste leading to the externality. Taking the external costs into account resulted in the improvement in efficiency of agrochemicals. The actual level of agrochemicals was about a hundred times higher than the most efficient level.

This study is beyond the exogenous external costs. There is a need for a further comprehensive study to include more exogenous external costs associated with agrochemicals to have the potential value of such costs and the most socially efficient use of agrochemicals. The long-term effects of external cost to the environment and socio-economic livelihood of the farmers and other communities are considerable. Advocating for alternatives to decrease the use of detrimental agro-inputs, in the long run, will provide sound quality of the environment. Socially, both producers and consumers get the environmental and health benefits.

To reduce the agrochemical waste that caused environmental problems, a policy should be formulated to make farming more efficient, particularly for agrochemical use. It can be done by introducing agronomic technologies and enhancing farmers’ knowledge on environmentally friendly agriculture.

Environmental efficiency is able to estimate the quantity of agrochemical waste. The waste is a kind of non-point source pollution whose source and quantity are very difficult to identify and measure. As there are many definitions and measurement of environmental performance, this concept of environmental efficiency can be one of the alternatives.

By examining the role of farming attitudes and motivations, the aim of this paper is to provide a framework for better understanding farmers' behaviour in relation to the decision to obtain credit.

Using a nationally representative survey of farm operators in Ireland, this paper derives explanatory variables (based on a factor analysis of respondents mean ratings of 13 attitudinal statements) representing three different farming motivations. An ordered logit model is then formulated to examine the effect of farming attitudes as well as personal characteristics and farm structural variables on the degree of indebtedness.

Personal characteristics of the farmer such as age and education as well as farm structural variables such as farm size and farm system were all found to strongly affect decisions in relation to credit use. The study identified how farmers are not just driven by business related goals such as maximising profits but are also strongly motivated by productivist tendencies and perceived lifestyle benefits associated with farm work. These underlying farming motivations were, in turn, found to have a differential impact on credit use. Specifically, business orientated attitudes were found to provide a prime incentive for farmers to borrow funds. On the other hand, farmers who strongly value the benefits associated with the farming lifestyle were less likely to look for credit.

Past research has focused on the effect of socio‐demographic characteristics and farm structural variables in examining differences in farm indebtedness. This study extends this literature by specifically examining the role of farming attitudes. Obtaining a deeper understanding of the factors that affect the level of farming debt will be important as the degree of indebtedness has been found to affect farmers' management decisions. Outside of explaining farm credit use, farming attitudes and motivations may have an important impact on farmers' behaviour in relation to a variety of farm activities.

Sustainable development is the management and conservation of the basic natural resources through which organizational and technological changes are lead to meet present and future needs of humans. In developing and analyzing the solutions based on sustainable development principles, an integrated and holistic approach needs to be pursued. Not only system dynamics has the essential tools for systemic analysis, but also it is an appropriate approach for perceiving problems and offering solutions. The aim of this study is to present an integrated and systemic model to analyze the existent dynamics in sustainable development of Iran’s farming industry.

To achieve the mathematical equations and values of model’s variables, a simulation is carried out using the data gathered from Damavand city, Tehran, Iran. The parameters of the model are selected and calculated considering the specifications of this case study. After modeling the system, Vensim simulation software has been employed, followed by identifying the leverage points of the model; then, a set of scenarios have been generated and tested through simulation to achieve a much improved understanding of the system’s dynamic behavior.

The results show that two factors are among the most important leverage points: “profit gained from agriculture” and “required water”. The authors could also observe that the main issue in Damavand is the lack of water for which saving policies would be a major step toward agriculture’s sustainable development in this area.

The paper shows how System Dynamics simulation approach can provide deep insights into the field of sustainable development and present efficient policies for agriculture sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse factors that determine farmers’ intention to commercialise vegetable-based agribusiness ventures in rural areas and assess the effect of commercialisation on farmers’ income.

The study used a regression approach. Market participation and farmers’ income were hypothesised to be dependent on other external factors. This study employed data compiled from a quantitative survey of 357 farm households located in four major vegetable producing regions of rural East Java and Bali, Indonesia.

Results indicate that household attributes, business environment, supporting facilities and farm characteristics determined farmers to commercialise vegetable farming. Access to credit, seed technology and farm site played high contribution to the market participation. Ultimately, commercial vegetable farming provides an economic advantage regarding increased income. Land fragmentation and status of landholding were identified to influence the net revenue of vegetable farming.

This study has a limitation concerning the number of samples and the availability of data and information. The number of samples is 357 which is about 4 per cent of the total population.

Establishment of vegetable agribusiness terminals with all market infrastructures, adequate access to market information, credit and human capital investment through training and extension services are also required, will boost market participation. Re-structuring land ownership might be the best step to augment farmers’ income, through consolidation of fragmented fertile lands devoted to intensive vegetable farming.

This study was purposely conducted in rural areas where there were subsistence farmers, as this is to improve farmers’ income by commercialising vegetable crops. A novel feature of this finding is the role of access to credit in the commercialisation of vegetable farming and the impact of landholding status on the profitability of intensive farming of high-valued vegetables.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how the unfolding diet transformation in East and Southern Africa is likely to influence the evolution of employment within its agrifood system (AFS) and between that system and the rest of the economy. To briefly consider implications for education and skill acquisition.

The authors link changing diets to employment structure. The authors then use alternative projections of diet change over 15- and 30-year intervals to develop scenarios on changes in employment structure.

As long as incomes in ESA continue to rise at levels near those of the past decade, the transformation of their economies is likely to advance dramatically. Key features will be: sharp decline in the share of the workforce engaged in farming even as absolute numbers rise modestly, sharp increase in the share engaged in non-farm segments of the AFS, and an even sharper increase in the share engaged outside the AFS. Within the AFS, food preparation away from home is likely to grow most rapidly, followed by food manufacturing, and finally by marketing, transport, and other AFS services. Resource booms in Mozambique and (potentially) Tanzania are the main factor that may change this pattern.

Clarifying policy implications requires renewed research given the rapid changes in Africa over the past 15 years.

This is the first paper to explicitly link changing diets to changing employment within the AFS.

Why did peasants in old-regime Europe scatter their land in small strips within open fields? According to an influential theory advocated by Deirdre McCloskey, the system’s main aim was risk reduction. By spreading out land, peasants were less exposed to the caprices of nature: heavy rains, droughts, frost, or hailstorms. In a time when other insurance institutions were lacking, this approach could be a rational solution, even if, as McCloskey suggests, it could be achieved only at the expense of overall agricultural productivity.

Over the years, McCloskey’s theory has repeatedly been debated. Still, it has never been empirically established to what extent the open fields actually reduced risk. McCloskey offered only indirect evidence, based on hypothetical calculations from short series demesne level yields. Risks on enclosed and open-field land farms were thus never compared.

This chapter presents farm-level harvest variation series, including observations from both types of land. It is based on tithe records of 1,700 farms in Southern Sweden from 1715–1860. Results show that scattering had a limited effect on agricultural risk. The system did protect against small-scale local crop failures. It was less efficient, however, when it came to the large-scale regional harvest disasters that constituted a much more serious threat to peasants of the time. From this perspective, the inner logic of the open-field system is taken up for renewed consideration.

The new programming period of 2021–2027 of the European Union (EU) Common Agricultural Policy requires reconsidering the policy measures. In the new period, the European Commission is to allow each member state (MS) developing eco-schemes to support and/or incentivise farmers to observe agricultural practices beneficial for the climate and the environment beyond their mandatory requirements. The purpose of this paper is to compare the performance of organic and conventional family farms.

Organic farming under the organic farming measure of the Rural Development Programme is one of the most widely applied sustainable farming practices in the EU as well as in Lithuania. By assessing the ex post economic impact of the organic farming measure on farm performance indicators, the authors seek to reveal possibilities and obstacles for the implementation of sustainable farming practices. A counterfactual ex post impact assessment method – propensity score matching (PSM) analysis – was used to evaluate ex post economic impact of the organic farming measure on the performance of farming indicators.

The application of the PSM allowed assessing both the effectiveness of the implemented measure and possibilities for applying this measure in the future. The research has revealed that organic farming is less profitable and the gap between farm income in organic and conventional farms has increased during the period of 2007–2013.

The most comprehensive economic information about the farm activities from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) was used for the ex post economic impact evaluation of the organic farming measure in Lithuania. The matched groups of Lithuanian family farms (organic and conventional) were compared. The results of the research provide a new knowledge about the effectiveness of the organic farming measure in Lithuania and suggest the ways of their improvement in the future. The results can also be generalised to other countries with similar agricultural structure.

This paper aims to perform a meta‐analysis of the literature comparing the environmental impacts of organic and conventional farming and linking these to differences in management practises. The studied environmental impacts are related to land use efficiency, organic matter content in the soil, nitrate and phosphate leaching to the water system, greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity.

The theoretic framework uses the driver‐state‐response framework and literature data were analysed using meta‐analysis methodology. Meta‐analysis is the statistical analysis of multiple study results. Data were obtained by screening peer reviewed literature.

From the paper's meta‐analysis it can conclude that soils in organic farming systems have on average a higher content of organic matter. It can also conclude that organic farming contributes positively to agro‐biodiversity (breeds used by the farmers) and natural biodiversity (wild life). Concerning the impact of the organic farming system on nitrate and phosphorous leaching and greenhouse gas emissions the result of the analysis is not that straightforward. When expressed per production area organic farming scores better than conventional farming for these items. However, given the lower land use efficiency of organic farming in developed countries, this positive effect expressed per unit product is less pronounced or not present at all.

Given the recent growth of organic farming and the general perception that organic farming is more environment friendly than its conventional counterpart, it is interesting to explore whether it meets the alleged benefits. By combining several studies in one analysis, the technique of meta‐analysis is powerful and may allow the generation of more nuanced findings and the generalisation of those findings.