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Access to finance is an important condition for the development of agriculture and the farms’ performance. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the association between the technical efficiency of horticultural farms and access to finance from different finance providers.

Data were collected from 434 farmers who produce mango, mangosteen, chili and red onion in Indonesia. Data were subsequently analysed using data envelopment analysis and bootstrap truncated regression.

The results show that commercial credit from banks and in-kind finance provided through farmers’ associations have a positive association with the technical efficiency of some types of horticultural farms. Commercial credit from micro finance institution and flexible payment of inputs to the agricultural input kiosk generally have negative associations, especially with the technical efficiency of mangosteen farms. Subsidised credit from banks and in-kind finance from traders have both positive and negative associations with the technical efficiency of the horticultural farms.

This study adds to the existing literature by analysing access to finance from a broader range of finance providers and its relation to technical efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to assess direct and indirect damages of dairy processors and pig and poultry slaughterhouses in The Netherlands following the occurrence of a feed crisis.

Starting from a number of feed crisis scenarios the paper analyses processing industry damage parameters through a combination of sector data and individual company assessments. In case of confidential data, outcomes are presented as indices.

The paper finds that, in the most likely scenario, it is expected that a feed crisis affects 15 processors, i.e. 20 per cent of processing business in The Netherlands. Processors' direct damage is largely (>90 per cent) determined by the mixing of produce during various phases of processing. Indirect damage is on average perceived not to exceed direct damage.

The results are useful in current stakeholder debates on sharing damage burdens of feed crises across supply chain partners.

This paper extends currently available risk analyses of feed contaminations by eliciting damage beyond farm level.

Development studies rarely measure the impact of value chain strategies on performance. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the perceived contribution of strategies to the performance of three honey value chains in Brazil.

The value chain structure-conduct-performance (SCP) framework was used to select strategies and two performance indicators, honey production growth and local value-added. In a conjoint study, experts were asked to judge the contribution to the two performance indicators of several hypothetical combinations of value chain strategies.

According to the experts, adoption of specialised technical assistance, sharing resources at the production step, increase in exports, and organic certification were the strategies which contributed the most to performance. Simulations suggested that some honey value chains could have greatly increased their performance with these higher pay-off strategies.

Quantifying the perceived impact of individual strategies contributes to improved evaluation of development interventions.

Outcomes also show that conjoint analysis is a useful method for policy evaluations in data scarce situations.

The paper combines an extended SCP framework for strategy selection and conjoint analysis for strategy evaluation of value chains.

This chapter opens the second part of the Volume, focusing on the small farms' role and dynamics within the evolving food system. Assessing small farmers' actual and potential contribution to the change towards a sustainable food and nutrition security requires a deep understanding of their strategic decision-making processes. These processes take place in a context highly conditioned by internal and external conditions, including the complex relations between farm and household, which are mapped and described. Building on an adaptation of Porter's model (Porter, 1990), the chapter investigates how farmers, given those conditions, define their strategies (in particular their innovation strategies) aimed at economic and financial sustainability through a multidisciplinary analysis of scientific literature. Internal conditions are identified in the light of the Agricultural Household Model (Singh & Subramanian, 1986) which emphasizes how family farming strategies aim at combining business-related objectives, and family welfare. Then, a comprehensive set of external conditions is identified and then grouped within eight categories: ‘Factors’, ‘Demand’, ‘Finance and Risk’, ‘Regulation and Policy’, ‘Technological’, ‘Ecological’, ‘Socio-institutional’ and ‘Socio-demographic’. Similarly, six types of strategies are identified: ‘Agro-industrial competitiveness’, ‘Blurring farm borders’, ‘Rural development’, ‘Risk management’, ‘Political support’ and ‘Coping with farming decline’.

The Agri-Food supply chain (AFSC) conventionally suffers from multifaceted transparency, integration, traceability, product quality, and many more. Recently, various digital technologies have emerged, which reflect the potential to address the majority of such concerns. This chapter is an effort toward developing a vision for the future of the agri-food supply chain through digitalization. The technologies prominently covered in the chapter are the internet of things (IoT), blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI). Different challenges the agri-food supply chain participants perceived in implementing digital technologies were identified through literature review and primary survey. The significant challenges are trained workforce, funds availability, and clarity on economic gains from digitalisation. In conclusion, few strategies toward the implementation of digital technologies in agri-food supply chains are discussed.

Since 1980, the principal form of crop loss assistance in the United States has been provided through the Federal Crop Insurance Program. The Federal Crop Insurance Act of 1980 was intended to replace disaster programs with a subsidized insurance program that farmers could depend on in the event of crop losses. Crop insurance was seen as preferable to disaster assistance because it was less costly and hence could be provided to more producers, was less likely to encourage moral hazard, and less likely to encourage producers to plant crops on marginal lands. Despite substantial growth in the program, the crop insurance program has failed to replace other disaster programs as the sole form of assistance. Over the past 20 years, producers received an estimated $15 billion in supplemental disaster payments in addition to $22 billion in crop insurance indemnities.

The aim of this study is to discover the critical success factors (CSFs) for the Halal supply chain management because this area is gaining recognition. Plus, the aim is to use the CSFs for future research.

The study is based on the application of CSFs on the Halal supply chain. A comprehensive literature review is undertaken to discover the CSFs of conventional supply chain and to apply it to the Halal supply chain.

Government support, transportation planning, information technology, human resource management, collaborative relationship, Halal certification and Halal traceability are the CSFs for the Halal supply chain.

This study only discusses the CSFs related to the Halal supply chain and ignoring other forms of Halal businesses. This study only concerns on English literatures and omit other languages. The study lacks empirical evidence and future research should be done to test the CSFs relevancy.

This study addresses stakeholders of the Halal supply chain CSFs, which have not been fully understand and appreciated.

CSFs concept has never been attempted on the Halal supply chain. Therefore, this study appraises the concept of CSFs and adds value to the knowledge on the Halal supply chain.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the potential benefits of value chain analysis (VCA) improvement projects by evaluating their effectiveness for all chain members.

The study uses an action research approach to extend VCA methodology by implementing an improvement project developed through the VCA process, and the subsequent evaluation of this project using a combination of techniques.

The paper addressed a key research gap around the evaluation of improvement projects and has shown that the implementation of VCA, both as a guiding framework for developing interventions and a basis for evaluating their effectiveness, can provide significant benefits to all industry stakeholders.

The research focussed on evaluating the outcomes of a single project within an industry case study. While the diversity in different industry structures and the range of improvement projects possible makes it difficult to generalise the findings, the methodology and evaluation options make a valuable practical and theoretical contribution.

The case study highlights the advantages of improvement projects guided by VCA and offers a variety of evaluation options for both private and public sector VCA practitioners.

This study is one of the very few to evaluate the implementation of activities identified during the diagnostic phase of an agribusiness VCA.

The purpose of this paper is to determine which factors influence the choice to adopt subsidized multi-peril crop insurance (MPCI) in the Netherlands and whether prior hail insurance uptake is one of the determinants of MPCI adoption. In addition, it is analyzed whether subsidized MPCI has reduced disaster relief spending.

Cross-sectional survey with 512 respondents using a stratified design comprising MPCI adopters and non-adopters sampled from the Dutch national census data base. The national census, including information on subsidized MPCI adoption from 2010 up to and including 2015, was supplemented with information on (prior) traditional market-based hail insurance uptake, and other underlying determining factors were elicited. Logistic regression analysis was used to determine which factors influence the choice to adopt MPCI.

Analysis of MPCI adoption reveals that subsidized MPCI mainly substituted for market-based hail insurance uptake up to now. Growers who did not insure against hail in the past were hardly reached. Approximately, three-quarter of MPCI adopters insured hail prior to market introduction of MPCI. In the arable sector, MPCI adoption was 2.89 (p<0.01) more likely for prior hail insurance adopters compared to non-adopters, while it was 9.67 (p<0.01) more likely in the fruit sector.

In the arable sector, it is expected that MPCI uptake in the coming years will reach more prior non-adopters of hail insurance as demand is expected to increase. Prior hail insurance adopters in the arable sector can be seen as the early MPCI adopters. In the fruit sector, adoption rates are already at a relative high level and a further significant increase by targeting non-adopters of hail insurance is not likely.

Governmental support has crowded out to some extend traditional market-based hail insurance in the Netherlands. Since the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union is creating more momentum to subsidize crop insurance more member states with a long history of a mature hail insurance market may be confronted with similar crowding-out effects.