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The purpose of this paper is to assess the adherence, constraints and key factors associated with smallholder pineapple farmers’ compliance with Global working group for Good Agricultural Practice (GLOBALGAP) standards in the Akuapem-South Municipal area, Ghana. It utilizes the modeling of socio-economic, farm, market and institutional factors influencing smallholder farmers’ compliance with GLOBALGAP standards. This paper aims to enhance smallholder farmers’ compliance with food safety standards in particular GLOBALGAP so they can continue to participate in international food trade.

The study uses mainly primary data solicited from 150 randomly selected smallholder farmers. Descriptive statistics are employed in estimating compliant farmers’ rate of adherence with standards requirements and identifying constraints of farmers while a probit regression model is used to determine the factors influencing GLOBALGAP compliance decision of farmers.

Findings of the study show that compliant farmers’ rate of adherence with the standard is about 90 percent and this is below the minor musts compliance criteria of 95 percent. The results also indicate that lack of access to farm credits, high cost of farm inputs and high cost of labor are the major constraints to GLOBALGAP compliance. Factors found to positively influence farmers’ compliance decision are number of pineapple farms, access to off-farm income, access to market information and extension services. However, compliance is negatively influenced by age.

Majority of Ghanaian smallholder pineapple farmers are not GLOBALGAP certified. The study was limited to Akuapem-South because most farmers produce pineapple for the export market and are certified under the Option II GLOBALGAP group certification.

This paper brings to bear issues confronting food safety standards compliance among smallholder farmers in developing countries, particularly Ghana.

Agricultural Trade, Farm Management, Economics of Food Safety

Both undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Agribusiness and Agricultural Economics.

The pineapple production sector plays a very significant role in the Ghanaian horticultural industry. Production and export of fresh pineapple has been Ghana’s most developed high-value supply chain. However, the introduction of the GlobalGAP food safety standard in 2007 resulted in a fall in smallholder farmers’ participation in exportable pineapple production and subsequently led to declining trends in pineapple exports. The Ghanaian horticultural industry received quite a number of interventions over the years aimed at revitalizing the horticultural export sector and enhancing international competitiveness. However, the pineapple export sub-sector is still constrained with production and market access challenges meaning the sector struggles to survive.

The GlobalGAP standard compliance case is an appropriate way of explaining how smallholder farmers make informed decisions concerning the adoption of new farm practices. The case presents a careful evaluation of technical, institutional and socio-economic factors influencing a farmer’s decision to comply or not to comply with the GlobalGAP standard. Students should be able to apply farm management decision-making concepts and tools such as profit maximization and binary choice modelling techniques to explain a farmers’ final decisions on GlobalGAP standard compliance. This case should enable students to appreciate key factors constraining agricultural export trade performance in developing countries. The case should also contribute to students’ understanding of smallholder farmers’ decisions on food safety standards compliance, particularly GlobalGAP, and the challenges associated with the entire compliance process. Moreover, this case should provide students with possible policy considerations geared towards making food safety standards compliance easier, effective and sustainable in developing countries so as to enhance market access while ensuring food quality and safety along high-value food supply chains.

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CSS 7 Management Science

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of GLOBALGAP standards certification on farmer's preference for marketing contract choices including written contracts, oral contracts and spot contracts, as well as to establish the impact of marketing contracts on net returns from snap bean production in Kenya.

In this study, we use a data collected from 446 Snap bean farmers in Kenya. Using a two-step selection Bourguignon Frontier and Gurgand (BFG) model and Propensity Score Matching (PSM), we analysed determinants of Global Gap Certification and other farming characteristics that influence smallholder farmers preference for marketing contracts and net returns from snap beans venture.

Results indicate that attending GLOBALGAP training, GLOBALGAP subsidy support, membership to GLOBALGAP farmer's groups, and selling beans to GLOBALGAP certified GLOBALGAP buyers would significantly influence better returns underwritten marketing contracts. Producing snap beans underwritten marketing contracts would get farmer's net returns of between 1.8 and 8% while producing under oral and spot market contracts would earn farmer net returns of between 0.2 and 0.08 %.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to examine the influence of GLOBALGAP standards certification on marketing contract choices and net returns from snap bean production, while accounting for selectivity biasness.

The purpose of this paper is to explore farmers’ intention to stay under a quality certification scheme, and the factors that impact this intention.

Combining the agricultural household approach with the value concept, the paper analyses farmers’ intention using field research data. The improvements farmers observe after certification are viewed as utilities the farm household derives, which have an impact on farmers’ intention. These improvements are located as “enablers” and “results” in the EFQM Excellence Model to better explain the findings.

Farmers’ intention tends to be positive, and impacted by five improvements. These are located in both the enablers and results fields, implying that farmers’ intention is holistically shaped. Furthermore, eight characteristics of the farm and farm household, and four sources of information, shift farmers’ intention.

Since farmers’ intention is examined independently of the quality standards that each one implements, future research should account for the impact of these differences. It should also examine the impact of various policy measures on farmers’ intention. Since analysis assumes a linear relationship, future research should introduce a more complex model, possibly in structural form.

Public authorities should make the maintenance of quality certification more attractive, especially for segments without strong intention. Certifiers should adjust their audit services to enhance value; and players in the food supply chain should consider the drivers of farmers’ intention when building marketing strategies.

To the authors’ knowledge, there are no extant studies exploring farmers’ intention to maintain certification. In addition, the paper proposes a novel theoretical framework, which should also be used in cases where quality-related changes in enterprises impact the income and quality of life of the enterprise owners, for instance in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The aim of this article was to present a retrospective assessment of the intellectual structure of private agricultural and food standards research in global trade. This study was motivated by the increasing role of standards and certifications in governing global agricultural and food trade.

The current investigation was carried out with bibliometric methods using VOSviewer software. Techniques such as citation, co-citation, keyword co-occurrence, keyword evolution and co-authorship analyses were performed to tackle the research questions. Articles were extracted from Scopus database for the period 1998–2022 (30th August 2022) with selected keywords (“Private food standard*” OR “food standard*” OR “agri-food standard*” AND “agri*” OR “agro*” OR “farm*” OR “food*” AND “international trade” OR “global trade” OR “international business”) along certain filters (subject – Economics and Business management: language – English: Document – article and review articles and source – journals).

The results show that the intellectual structure of private agricultural and food standards research in global trade has evolved around five clusters, namely: (1) the political economy of food standards, (2) food standards and their challenges in global trade, (3) food standards and integration into value chains, (4) food standards and market access and (5) food standards and exports from developing countries. However, the authors found the research gaps in each of the thematic clusters.

The main limitation of this study is that the authors focused their attention on certain aspects of bibliometric review, such as the intellectual structure of the field, the citation analysis and the collaboration network. Future research could attempt to explore new field development through bibliographic coupling and deepening of conceptual structure using content analysis by incorporating the research methods used in the respective studies.

The emerging research areas in private agricultural and food standards in global trade are related to topics on food quality, sustainable development, genetically modified organisms, World Trade Organization, tariff structure, trade agreements, food industry and European Union. However, there is less research and little collaboration between Africa and developed countries. For example, Africa's total publications were (15), while the US had (46), China (15), Belgium (23), Germany (27), Italy (32) and the UK (24).

There are limited studies that have conducted a retrospective evaluation of the intellectual structure of private agricultural and food standards research in the global trade using bibliometric analysis. The present investigation is novel in identifying the thematic research clusters, emerging issues and future research directions. This is more important to developing countries as their agricultural produce face challenges to access markets of the developed world.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role Italian Producer Organizations (POs) play in implementing sustainability actions in the fruit and vegetable sector. In particular, it aimed at verifying whether environmental actions reveal different models with respect to implementation of sustainability and at analyzing the relationship between environmental strategies and specific POs’ characteristics.

The work is based on a field survey carried out by submitting a questionnaire to POs. Collected data were processed by means of exploratory data and multivariate analysis techniques. A cluster analysis was used to classify POs with respect to their ability/will to translate views into sustainability actions.

Three different groups were identified with reference to the involvement in ethical and environmental actions. Results show that POs’ strategies often include interlinked economic and environmental objectives. In particular, product quality improvement often goes with the promotion of environmentally friendly techniques, while other environmental actions respond to a reduction costs rather than to a sustainability strategy.

Only 38 out of 300 POs returned the questionnaire. Because of the small sample, the analysis has only an exploratory nature and aims at giving a first insight on how sustainability issues are intended and implemented in the agri-food sector.

Most works have analyzed environmental strategies at the company level. This study focused on POs in the agri-food sector as they can also represent the drivers of a sustainability pattern involving their members.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the impacts that the recent proliferation of private and overlapping standards is having in the trade of agricultural products from developing countries.

In a first stage industry experts in the Chilean fresh fruit trading industry were interviewed to understand the perceived impact that private standards are imposing in the industry. These interviews allowed to identify the market case study, table grapes, the landscape of private standards and their prevalence in different countries. In a second stage, a gravity trade model for trade in table grapes was estimated, with a focus on the more stringent countries identified by experts in the first stage.

We show evidence that the proliferation of private standards required by large European retailers has diverted trade away from more stringent countries that require more certifications (and into less stringent European markets). We also show that the costs of these additional certifications have been shared by trading partners, via an increase in direct sales, as opposed to consignment (the traditional marketing mode), which is associated with higher prices.

The impacts of the recent proliferation of private and overlapping standards in international trade needs to be better understood both by the legal and economic literature. While the use of private standards has been growing since the 1990s, there is a recent trend of large European retailers imposing their own and overlapping standards that needs to be better understood to inform policy.

While there is a thin literature on the impact of private standards on trade, most of this has studied the effects of the now de facto mandatory GlobalGAP certification. However, there is a recent trend by large European retailers of demanding their own private certifications, together with other already existing overlapping private standards. This study describes and analyzes the impacts of this rather new trend.

Effective standards are at once technical specifications for various people, processes, and products, as well as world-changing phenomena. Put simply, standards are one means by which we determine who we are and how we shall live. Alternatively, standards are more than technical specifications; effectively implemented standards are part of the social infrastructure that makes a given type of society possible. This, in turn, suggests that – if we are to collectively decide what kind of society and what kind of agri-food sector we want – the recent turn to standards (and away from government regulation) cannot be left in the hands of a few experts, but must be subjected to democratic deliberation. This is especially true if the scope of standards is to be expanded so as to include problems such as climate change and sustainability. These are “wicked problems” in that all the parameters cannot be specified, there is no single optimum to be attained and “…there is no criterion system nor rule which would tell you what is correct or false” (Rittel, 1972).

The aim of this paper is to study the influence of quality standards on contract arrangements in food supply chains.

A qualitative double case study was conducted on the dairy and citrus sectors in Uruguay. A transaction cost theoretical framework was used. All current public and private quality standards applied by processors were studied in relation to contract arrangements between processors and upstream producers as well as downstream buyers for each sector.

Quality standards complement contract arrangements for upstream transactions, leading to hierarchy-type contract arrangements. Quality standards substitute contract arrangements for downstream transactions, leading to market- or hybrid-type contract arrangements.

Longitudinal studies that measure changes in contract arrangements over time are recommended.

Supply chain actors can reduce transaction costs by aligning quality standards with appropriate contract arrangements – further supported by public instruments.

Quality standards have differential influence on underlying transaction characteristics, and therefore on contract arrangements, depending on the location of the transaction in the supply chain.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors hindering the adoption of good agricultural practices (GAPs) in the Thai fresh fruit and vegetable industry from the perspectives of key stakeholders in different tiers of the supply chain up to consumers.

Semi-structured interviews were carried out in Bangkok and nearby cities. The key informants were experts, governmental authorities, producers, distributors, exporters, and consumers. A qualitative content-summarising approach was used to analyse the interview transcripts.

Stakeholders perceived the credibility of national GAP (Q-GAP) standards implemented in the Thai domestic market as low, due to a lack of reliable verification and traceability and because the system is managed by governmental bodies. Consumer demand could drive the market of safe produce, but retail stores are the main influencers of producers’ adoption of GAPs in domestic markets.

The findings are based on a small group of Thai fresh produce industry players and consumers who operate mainly in an urban context.

The paper provides relevant information for policy makers and industrialists to find appropriate strategies to sustain GAPs in Thailand. Stakeholder awareness of food safety issues and information provision are crucial.

This is the first in-depth study of stakeholders’ perceptions of GAP implementation in the Thai fresh produce supply chain as the industry is currently transitioning from a commodity market to a quality/safety-oriented market. The results raise important issues regarding GAP adoption, food safety certification, and labelling in Thailand.