Search results
1 – 10 of over 16000This ethnographic study of school food service employees at an elementary, middle, and high school in the Midwest introduces “feeding labor,” a concept to signify a form of…
Abstract
Purpose
This ethnographic study of school food service employees at an elementary, middle, and high school in the Midwest introduces “feeding labor,” a concept to signify a form of gendered labor that entails emotional and bodily feeding activities.
Methodology
This chapter is based on 18 months of participant-observation and 25 in-depth interviews.
Findings
I illustrate three characteristics of feeding labor: (1) the physical labor of attending to the feeding needs of customers, (2) the emotional labor of managing feelings to create and respond to customers, and (3) variations in the gendered performance of feeding labor as explained through the intersection of race, class, and age. These dimensions vary across different field sites and emerge as three distinct patterns of feeding labor: (1) motherly feeding labor involves physical and emotional attentiveness and nurturing with mostly middle- and upper-class young white customers, (2) tough-love feeding labor involves a mix of tough, but caring respect and discipline when serving mostly working- and lower-middle class racially mixed young teens, and (3) efficient feeding labor involves fast, courteous service when serving mostly working- and middle-class predominantly white teenagers.
Implications
These findings show that a caring and nurturing style of emotional and physical labor is central in schools with white, middle-class, young students, but that other forms of gendered feeding labor are performed in schools composed of students with different race, class, and age cohorts that emphasize displaying tough-love and efficiency while serving students food. Examining this form of labor allows us to see how social inequalities are maintained and sustained in the school cafeteria.
Details
Keywords
Vasilikie Demos and Marcia Texler Segal
This introduction provides an overview of the themes and chapters of this volume.
Abstract
Purpose/approach
This introduction provides an overview of the themes and chapters of this volume.
Research implications
The chapters present original qualitative and quantitative research illustrating the complex relationship between gender and food. The need to understand the relationship intersectionally and in historical context is apparent and provisioning as caring emerges as a major theme.
Practical and social implications
Food is a human right yet it is not always and everywhere available and when it is not always humanly produced and healthful. The fact that food production and consumption is gendered cannot be ignored in the quest for feeding our planet.
Originality/value
The chapter and the volume are intended to illustrate some of the many ways that food and gender are related and to encourage gender scholars to continue to pay attention to food research.
Details
Keywords
Taciana Mareth, Luiz Felipe Scavarda, Antonio Marcio Tavares Thomé, Fernando Luiz Cyrino Oliveira and Tiago Wickstrom Alves
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the determinants of technical efficiency (TE) in dairy farms located in the South of Brazil, aiming for a better understanding of the topic…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the determinants of technical efficiency (TE) in dairy farms located in the South of Brazil, aiming for a better understanding of the topic for academics, dairy farmers and policymakers to improve the productivity and competitiveness of dairy farms.
Design/methodology/approach
This study was developed using a two-stage approach. Data envelopment analysis was used to estimate the TE level and regression models to understand the factors affecting TE in dairy farms. The sample size is 253 dairy farms in the South of Brazil.
Findings
The variation in the mean TE indexes reported in the literature can be explained by the attributes of the analysed studies, including the education of the farm operator, farm size (number of cows and milk), feed and labour costs, and use of services. Additionally, the results suggest that dairy farmers in the sample could increase milk output by 50.1 per cent (level of inefficiency) on average if they improve their TE.
Originality/value
This study makes three important contributions: first, it formulates hypotheses from the previous literature’s propositions on the estimation of TE in dairy farms; second, it tests the hypotheses in an empirical study to understand the main factors affecting the TE in dairy farms of the selected municipalities in the South of Brazil; and third, it compares previous findings on the determinants of TE in dairy farms serving different stakeholders, such as researchers, farmers and government representatives, to improve the productivity and competitiveness of dairy farms.
Details
Keywords
Subal C. Kumbhakar and Efthymios G. Tsionas
This paper deals with estimation of risk and the risk preference function when producers face uncertainties in production (usually labeled as production risk) and output price…
Abstract
This paper deals with estimation of risk and the risk preference function when producers face uncertainties in production (usually labeled as production risk) and output price. These uncertainties are modeled in the context of production theory where the objective of the producers is to maximize expected utility of normalized anticipated profit. Models are proposed to estimate risk preference of individual producers under (i) only production risk, (ii) only price risk, (iii) both production and price risks, (iv) production risk with technical inefficiency, (v) price risk with technical inefficiency, and (vi) both production and price risks with technical inefficiency. We discuss estimation of the production function, the output risk function, and the risk preference functions in some of these cases. Norwegian salmon farming data is used for an empirical application of some of the proposed models. We find that salmon farmers are, in general, risk averse. Labor is found to be risk decreasing while capital and feed are found to be risk increasing.
THE bulk of our hospitals, etc., were built about a century ago and when examined in the light of present‐day needs and future requirements they are found to be far from…
Abstract
THE bulk of our hospitals, etc., were built about a century ago and when examined in the light of present‐day needs and future requirements they are found to be far from satisfactory. Millions of hours are wasted annually due to the inadequacies of the buildings, equipment and management. Most of these institutions are trying to give a more comprehensive service to a volume of patients twice as large as they were originally designed to accommodate.
Colin G. Brown, Scott A. Waldron and John Francis Wilkins
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact on household and farming systems of government efforts to modernise production, build scale and develop specialisation in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact on household and farming systems of government efforts to modernise production, build scale and develop specialisation in the Tibet dairy industry.
Design/methodology/approach
An overview of policy strategies and industry developments is used to frame detailed micro-level analysis of household and farming systems where impacts on households are explored from both a comparative static and dynamic perspective.
Findings
Specialisation and intensification improve household returns but elicit major changes in the farming and household systems and engagement with external markets. For instance, scaling up from three to ten improved cows increases returns from farm activities by one-half but shifts households from a state of food self-sufficiency to one where they need to sell two-thirds of their dairy products and buy three-fifths of their livestock feed.
Research limitations/implications
The diversity among Tibetan farm households and the dynamic changes occurring in farm productivity, product markets and agrarian systems means that the empirical results are used as illustrative rather than definitive.
Originality/value
Relative to the large attention on the Chinese dairy industry with regard to food safety and industry development, the impacts of dairy specialisation on smallholders especially in western China have been overlooked. The case highlights several issues relevant to agrarian transition and development including changing labour use, risk exposure and engagement with external markets.
Details
Keywords
Nurul Aisyah Binti Mohd Suhaimi, Yann de Mey and Alfons Oude Lansink
The purpose of this paper is to measure the technical inefficiency of dairy farms and subsequently investigate the factors affecting technical inefficiency in the Malaysian dairy…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to measure the technical inefficiency of dairy farms and subsequently investigate the factors affecting technical inefficiency in the Malaysian dairy industry.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses multi-directional efficiency analysis to measure the technical inefficiency scores on a sample of 200 farm observations and single-bootstrap truncated regression model to define factors affecting technical inefficiency.
Findings
Managerial and program inefficiency scores are presented for intensive and semi-intensive production systems. The results reveal marked differences in the inefficiency scores across inputs and between production systems.
Practical implications
Intensive systems generally have lowest managerial and program inefficiency scores in the Malaysian dairy farming sector. Policy makers could use this information to advise dairy farmers to convert their farming system to the intensive system.
Social implications
The results suggest that the Malaysian Government should redefine its policy for providing farm finance and should target young farmers when designing training and extension programs in order to improve the performance of the dairy sector.
Originality/value
The existing literature on Southeast Asian dairy farming has neither focused on investigating input-specific efficiency nor on comparing managerial and program efficiency. This paper aims to fill this gap.
Details
Keywords
Amber M. Epp and Linda L. Price
Macro-social disruptions and evolutions open up new possibilities for feeding the family. This paper aims to review prior constraints imposed by the gendered history of care work…
Abstract
Purpose
Macro-social disruptions and evolutions open up new possibilities for feeding the family. This paper aims to review prior constraints imposed by the gendered history of care work as part of the moral economy, with particular focus on how food traditions and routines reproduce family relations.
Design/methodology/approach
An assemblage perspective provides an appropriate theoretical lens to trace such emergent reconfigurations.
Findings
The paper takes as its focus three macro shifts with the potential to incite more and less intentional changes to the realities of feeding the family: changes in home life and organization of care, dads’ participation in feeding the family and innovation in food systems.
Research limitations/implications
Theoretical contributions reveal how shifting macro-social structures constrain and shape trajectories for the work of feeding the family.
Practical implications
Practical implications focus on how creative family members, marketers and policymakers influence arrangements, capacities and practices of family life.
Originality/value
This commentary brings an assemblage view of family life that proposes potential lines of flight when considering macro-context shifts, with particular attention to the relationship between food and family.
Details
Keywords
Two effects simultaneously shape the future soybean meal (SBM) demand in China: the income effect on meat consumption and the transition effect due to commercial feed usage in…
Abstract
Purpose
Two effects simultaneously shape the future soybean meal (SBM) demand in China: the income effect on meat consumption and the transition effect due to commercial feed usage in animal production. The income effect has been studied intensively in previous research and results in rapidly growing animal product consumption. The commercial feed transition effect, however, is not well understood. The accurate forecast of SBM demand requires an integration of both effects. This study aims to contribute to the commodity forecast literature: by estimating the non-commercial to commercial feed effect and then comparing to the income effect.
Design/methodology/approach
This research addresses the gap in the literature by considering the diffusion path of commercial feeding technology when forecasting China's future SBM demand. The paper addresses the following five objectives to accomplish this goal. Objective 1: estimate income elasticity of demand for meat; Objective 2: estimate the current commercial feeding gap; Objective 3: analyze the reasons for low SBM feeding ratios; Objective 4: estimate future SBM feeding ratios; Objective 5: forecast future soybean demand in China.
Findings
China needs 33 years from 2009 to achieve the SBM feeding ratio of 98 percent. The difference in future derived demand for SBM mainly comes from the transition effect of animal production industry in China. The income effect only contributes on average 2.1 percent of the theoretical SBM consumption quantity over the next 20 years. The feeding technology diffusion effect, however, causes an additional 3.6 percent annual compound growth rate on the demand increase for SBM over the same time periods. The livestock industry's transition effect is roughly equivalent to 1.5 times the income effect.
Practical implications
Policy makers, industry managers, and analysts will now have not only a more accurate estimate of future SBM demand, but also a better understanding of the structural components of that estimation. In particular, the role of commercial feed adoption is explicitly estimated.
Originality/value
This research is the first to estimate the effect of the shift from non-commercial to commercial feeding systems on overall SBM demand. The results show that not accounting for the diffusion of new commercial feeding technology creates under the estimates of future SBM demand.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to consider the implications of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic for future research on intersection feminist studies of foodwork.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to consider the implications of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic for future research on intersection feminist studies of foodwork.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper offers a brief summary of feminist domestic foodwork research and COVID-19 food-related media commentary, focusing on race, gender and class.
Findings
This paper shows how domestic foodwork during pandemic lockdowns and the wider contexts reproduced racial, classed and gendered inequalities and hierarchies.
Research limitations/implications
The paper is limited by the recency of the pandemic and lack of empirical studies but still offers recommendations for a post-pandemic intersectional feminist agenda for studies and policy interventions relation to domestic foodwork.
Originality/value
The paper raises the importance of foodwork for feminist organisational studies, and how it consolidated and created racialised, gendered and classed inequalities during the pandemic, offering insights for future research and policy interventions around food and labour.