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This article explores the potential of an emerging group of farmers in Kenya, namely the growing segment of urban-based medium-size farmers, often called “telephone farmers”. To what extent do they benefit from an emerging ecosystem to support them in operating their farms, and what does that mean for the Hidden middle of agricultural value chains, the actors between the farmers and consumers? Unlocking the potential production of telephone farmers will require more services from collectors, traders, transport firms, the storage facilities, wholesalers and processing units and retailers. Ultimately, optimized telephone farm production benefits the business of Hidden middle value chain actors, increases incomes and jobs and improves food security.

Based on a survey and in-depth interviews a profile of the telephone farmers is given and their role as innovators is analyzed. The Latia Resource Centre (LRC) provides assistance to medium-size farmers, like the telephone farmers, helping them to prepare business plans and use modern technology and contributing to an emerging ecosystem providing support to all farmers.

The article analyzes the medium-size telephone farmers. It documents the contributions of this new agricultural actor to developing value chains and a dynamic ecosystem. The paper profiles the telephone farmers first and then identifies what they need and the support they receive. The emerging innovative ecosystem impacts agricultural productivity and production and hence the development of value chains. Small farmers gain access to opportunities offered by telephone farmers, working for them as outgrower or farm worker.

The authors used a small sample of 51 farmers and covered only a two-year period.

Small farmers are being helped through the emerging eco-system and farm labor acquire skills, which they can also you on another or their own farm.

Based on the analysis an even more effective ecosystem is suggested and policy recommendations are formulated before the conclusion is drawn that these medium-size farmers contribute to innovation diffusion, inclusive value chain development and food security and are becoming part of this expanding, innovative ecosystem. Following the debate on food security the results suggest to pay more attention to the development of telephone farmers given their role in developing agricultural value chains and innovative ecosystems.

Forest insurance is a popular way to reduce the loss of forest disasters, so it is necessary to actively involve stakeholders. In the multi-agent simulation model, the government, insurance companies and forest farmers participate as three main stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to mainly simulate the behavior of forest farmers under different environmental variables in order to find the important factors affecting the coverage of forest insurance, so as to improve the ability of forest farmers to resist risks in the face of disasters.

In the simulation process, the decision-making rule of a forest farmer’s purchasing behavior is a binary selection chain, which is created at random. Forest farmer agents who adapt to the environment will remain; on the contrary, those will be eliminated. The eliminated agents will renew their behavior selection chains through learning others’ successful behavior based on genetic algorithm. The multi-agent mode is set up on the Eclipse platform by using Java language.

The adjustment simulation experiments of insurance premium, insurance subsidy and forest area were carried out. According to the result, conclusions and suggestions are as follows: at present, government subsidies are necessary for the implementation of forest insurance; in the future, with the expansion of the insured forest area and the upgrading and large-scale operation of forest farms, forest farmers will be more willing to join forest insurance program, and, then, the implementation of forest insurance no longer requires government subsidies for forest insurance premiums.

This paper explores the impact of three important factors on the implementation of forest insurance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of the amount of trade credit granted to shrimp farmers in Ca Mau.

Based on the literature review, the authors proposed six hypotheses on the determinants of the amount of trade credit granted to shrimp farmers. Data collected from 120 shrimp farmers in Ca Mau were used to test the proposed hypotheses.

Two out of six determinants, i.e. the size of input order (a pulling factor) and the competition among input suppliers (a pushing factor), are significantly positively associated with the amount of trade credit granted to shrimp farmers. No impact of the other determinants was found. The findings imply that shrimp farmers should join cooperatives to enhance access to trade credit and mitigate the risk for input suppliers.

This paper sheds light on the fact that trade credit is still granted to such risky buyers as shrimp farmers, which has not been explored by previous studies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the economic performance of Norwegian crop farms using a stochastic frontier analysis.

The analysis was based on a translog cost function and unbalanced farm-level panel data for 1991–2013 from 455 Norwegian farms specialized in crop production in eastern and central regions of Norway.

The results of the analysis show that the mean efficiency was about 78–81 percent. Farm management practices and socioeconomic factors were shown to significantly affect the economic performance of Norwegian crop farms.

Farmers are getting different types of support from the government and the study does not account for the different effects of different kinds of subsidy on cost efficiency. Different subsidies might have different effects on farm performance. To get more informative and useful results, it would be necessary to repeat the analysis with less aggregated data on subsidy payments.

One implication for farmers (and their advisers) is that many of them are less efficient than the estimated benchmark (best performing farms). Thus, those lagging behind the best performing farms need to look at the way they are operating and to seek out ways to save costs or increase crop production. Perhaps there are things for lagging farmers to learn from their more productive farming neighbors. For instance, those farmers not practicing crop rotation might be well advised to try that practice.

For both taxpayers and consumers, one implication is that the contributions they pay that go to subsidize farmers appear to bring some benefits in terms of more efficient production that, in turn, increase the supply of some foods so possibly making food prices more affordable.

Unlike previous performance studies in the literature, the authors estimated farm-level economic performance accounting for the contribution of both an important farm management practice and selected socioeconomic factors. Good farm management practices, captured through crop rotation, land tenure, government support and off-farm activities were found to have made a positive and statistically significant contribution to reducing the cost of production on crop-producing farms in the Central and Eastern regions of Norway.

In Uganda, smallholder farmers produce about 70% of the food but receive very low prices on the sales channels they use. To improve farmers' livelihoods, other innovative sales channels such as farmers' markets (FMs) have to be explored. Therefore, the study aimed to determine the potential of establishing farmers' markets in Uganda, focusing on Kampala district.

A qualitative methodology was used to understand farmers' perceptions and the factors that could influence the success of the farmers' markets. In addition, the potential of FMs has been analyzed through the components of the Localized Agri-Food System (LAFS).

The respondents had a positive perception of the farmers' markets, and farmers have an urgent need for other sales channels that could be profitable for them. Factors that could influence the success of the FMs were highlighted, including infrastructure in the marketplace, transportation and taxation by the government.

The study had a limited sample size of the farmers, and it was carried out in 3 divisions of Kampala district, an urban area; thus, the findings cannot be generalized to fit the other regions of Uganda.

The LAFS showed that the foundation for establishing FMs is available; however, it has to be strengthened through the coordination of different stakeholders that work with the farmers.

Smallholder value chains are dynamic, changing over time in sudden, unpredictable ways as they adapt to shocks. Understanding these dynamics and adaptation is essential for these chains to remain competitive in turbulent markets. Many guides to value chain development, though they focus welcome attention on snapshots of current structure and performance, pay limited attention to the dynamic forces affecting these chains or to adaptation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper develops an expanded conceptual framework to understand value chain performance based on the theory of complex adaptive systems. The framework combines seven common properties of complex systems: time, uncertainty, sensitivity to initial conditions, endogenous shocks, sudden change, interacting agents and adaptation.

The authors outline how the framework can be used to ask new research questions and analyze case studies in order to improve our understanding of the development of smallholder value chains and their capacity for adaptation.

The framework highlights the need for greater attention to value chain dynamics.

The framework offers a new perspective on the dynamics of smallholder value chains.

Multisited ethnography has primarily been portrayed as a challenge for the following field-worker, with the researcher taking the central role and neglecting research participants also experiencing a multisited nature of their work. The authors argue that literature on multisited ethnography merely discusses multisitedness as a methodological theme. In correspondence, the authors propose to think of multisitedness not just as a methodological theme but also as an empirical theme.

The authors contend etic and emic perspectives to address multisitedness empirically, which enables researchers to compare and contrast the multisited topic of inquiry in academic “outsider” terms with the etic analysis and considering the perspective of the research participants' multisited experiences using the emic perspective. To show the fruitfulness of discussing multisitedness using the complementary etic and emic analysis, the authors present the example of Mennonite entrepreneurial activities in Belize, a heterogeneous group of migrants that established themselves as successful traders and entrepreneurs.

Through an etic multisited ethnographic perspective, the authors compare and contrast four communities of Mennonites in terms of their entrepreneurial activities, technology and energy use. Through an emic perspective, the authors demonstrate how Mennonites, while preferring an in-group focus, navigate their multisited entrepreneurial activities, which require interaction with the outside world.

The authors highlight the value of combining etic–emic reflections to acknowledge and include the multisited nature of many social phenomena as experienced by the research participants.