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Purpose – This study aims to analyze the contribution of revenue and consumption cost of soybean farmers.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Data analysis was done by quantitative descriptive analysis. Data were obtained in the form of numbers then the results of the obtained data were presented in the form of a systematic description. The sample in this study is the entire population of soybean farmers in Muara Batu, Aceh Utara by using census method as much as 50 farmers.

Findings – The results showed that the contribution of soybean farm revenue amounted to 6.94%, non-soybean farming amounted to 48.12%, and out farm activities amounted to 44.94%. This indicates that soybean farming activities are enough to contribute to increase the family revenue. Meanwhile, the average amount of household cost for food is 16,696,800 IDR/Year and for non-food is 8,397,500 IDR/Year. The analysis shows that although the contribution of soybean farming revenue is the lowest than the other farms’ revenue, it is very helpful to the farmers for fulfilling the needs of family consumption cost every year.

Research Limitations/Implications – The object of this research is to study all the farmers who utilize the land for soybean farming in Muara Batu. The research limitations are income contribution and consumption cost of soybean farmers.

Practical Implications – The amount of soybean production produced by farmers is much lower. However, the farmers can still increase their income if the amount of production can be increased by more intensification of soybean farming as tough as the use of superior varieties of soil processing, organic fertilizer on soil, balanced and integrated pest control, and harvesting and post-harvesting to reduce food loses.

Originality/Value – The farmers earned revenue not only from soybeans, but also from non-soybean farm and out farm. Soybean farming activities aim to increase revenues in order to meet the needs of the family that consist of food and non–food consumptions.

The paper intends to show why farms as we know them today may soon be a thing of the past and that organisational behaviour research has an important contribution to make in assisting the upcoming transformation.

Two strains of literature are reviewed and then synthesised: the literature on robots replacing humans in agricultural production and the literature on vertical integration that shifts decisions to agribusiness. Then the potential contribution of organisational behaviour research is outlined.

It is shown how the farm is likely to lose both roles for which their geographic entity is important: making decisions and carrying out production. This requires contributions from organisational behaviour research in the realms of decision designs and social systems.

It can be anticipated that the most profitable strategy for farmland owners in the future will be collaboration with contractors. Farms as organisations, are increasingly losing their importance. This not only has grave social implications for farmworkers and landowners but also for scholars in organisational behaviour research.

The paper challenges an organisational unit that is so familiar to us that it is rarely questioned.

This paper aims to investigate the entrepreneurial behaviours exhibited by commercial smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe, focusing on their socio-economic characteristics, and considers their implication for outcomes of livelihood resilience in a resource-constrained and turbulent rural context.

The study used survey data collected from 430 smallholder farmers in Masvingo province, Zimbabwe. Using a two-step cluster analysis, the study constructed a typology of farmers based on their entrepreneurial behaviour and socio-economic characteristics.

The results revealed that commercial smallholder farmers are heterogeneous in terms of their entrepreneurial behaviours. Four clusters were identified: non-entrepreneurial, goal-driven, means-driven and ambidextrous. Beyond their entrepreneurial behaviours, these clusters significantly differ in the socio-economic characterises (gender, age, education levels, farm size, proximity to the market and social connection) and farm performance (seasonal sales per hectare and farm income per hectare).

The typology framework relating farmers’ entrepreneurial behaviours to their socio-economic characteristics and business performance is important to tailor and therefore improve the effectiveness of farmer entrepreneurship programmes and policies. In particular, tailoring farmer entrepreneurship education is crucial to distribute land, finance and market resources in purposive ways to promote a combination of smallholder farmers’ effectual and causal behaviours at an early stage of their farm ventures.

Researchers still know little about which farmers’ behaviours are entrepreneurial and how these behaviours manifest in action during their commercial farm activities. This research leverages effectuation and causation theory to unveil previously overlooked distinctions on farmers’ entrepreneurial behaviours, thereby enhancing a more grounded understanding of farmer entrepreneurship in a resource-constrained context.

This article aims to investigate the financial constraints and nonlinearity of farm size growth.

Farm size growth is measured with land, labor and output using data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) for Hungary and Slovenia. A dynamic panel model is applied to assess financial constraints and nonlinearity of farm size growth.

Results show that, except for land in Slovenia and output in Hungary, liquidity constraints are less important for farm size growth than endogenous factors based on farm size growth expectations and steady farm size restructuring. Smaller farms are growing faster than larger ones. The hypothesis that a higher level of subsidies would increase farm size is not supported for Hungary. When farms reach a certain size, the land area of the largest farms increases. Farm debts in Hungary are linked with land growth and in Slovenia with output growth.

Further research on the impact of liquidity constraints and subsidies can be conducted at a disaggregate farm-type level to examine whether there is variability in the underlying interlinkages at the farm-type specialization level.

The implication that farm size growth is dependent on initial size and that smaller farms are growing faster than bigger ones indicates that it is not necessary to favor the fastest growing smaller farms thus supports the application of a non-discriminatory farm size policy for observing farm size structural changes.

The dynamic panel econometric model that incorporates cash flow as a measure of financial constraints provides insight into farm size growth in cross-country comparison in relation to potential farm liquidity constraints, farm debt and the nonlinearity of farm size, which information is of relevance to policy makers and practitioners.

Despite the abundance of small-scale farms in the USA and their importance for both rural economic development and food availability, the extensive research on small business management and entrepreneurship has mostly neglected the agricultural context, leaving many of these farms' business challenges unexplored. The authors focus on informing a specific decision faced by small farm managers: selling directly to consumers (i.e. farmer's markets) versus selling through aggregators. By collecting historical data and a series of interviews with industry experts, the authors employ simulation methodology to offer a framework that advises how small-scale farmers can allocate their product across these two channels to increase revenue in a given season. The results, which are relevant for operations management, small business management and entrepreneurship literature, can help small-scale farmers improve their performance and compete against their larger counterparts.

The authors rely on historical and interview data from key industry players (an aggregator and a small farm manager) to design a simulation analysis that determines which factors influence season-long farm revenue performance under varying strategies of channel allocation and commodity production.

The model suggests that farm managers should plan to evenly split their production between the two distribution channels, but if an even split is not possible, they should plan to keep a larger percentage in the nonaggregator (farmers' market/direct) channel. Further, the authors find that farmers can benefit significantly from a strong aggregator channel customer base, which suggests that farmers should promote and advertise the aggregator channel even if they only use it for a limited amount of their product.

The authors integrate small business management and operations management literature to study a widely understudied context and present practical implications for the performance of small-scale farms.

The aim of this paper is to assess whether the current European target to increase the areas under organic farming to 25% by 2030 is attainable and whether the simple increase in areas under organic farming may be sufficient to improve the sustainability of European agriculture.

The analysis has been carried out through a simple data processing related to areas under organic farming, for the period 2012–2020 (Eurostat database), in order to highlight the trends of areas under organic farming and to verify whether the annual average change rates may be compatible with the stated target.

The analysis showed that organic farming has a productive weight not corresponding to the amount on the total of the areas under cultivation and a small impact on the total of food consumption. It is a plausible hypothesis, the one that shows the increase in areas under organic farming will engage forms of agriculture and farms that, already, are more sustainable, so the achievement of 25% target will not particularly impact the European potential productive and the less environmental sustainable forms of agriculture.

This paper contributes to the debate, involving scientific community, policy maker and civil society, about the real contribution of organic farming to sustainability, and it will be developed in future research.

Digitalisation is perceived as a new process that may add value to firms. Current theoretical understanding assumes it should be part of a firm's strategy to respond to multiple pressures in the business environment. This paper explores the occurrence of digitalisation in a rare context, that of the English agricultural industry in the United Kingdom, a place disproportionality filled with family firms. The general understanding of digitalisation in family firm settings remains embryonic. The authors' explorations make theoretical contributions to research at the intersection of rural entrepreneurship, family business and innovation.

Utilising a purposive, qualitative approach, primary data was collected from multiple interviews with 28 UK family farms, and secondary data from another 164. Interview transcripts were coded using NVivo, along with secondary data from reports, observations and websites.

The authors present empirical evidence illustrating how digitalisation manifests incrementally and radically in different types of family farms. The authors present a model that shows the areas of farming that have, and continue to be, digitalised. This increases analytical precision when identifying digitalisation activities that differ depending on the strategy to either scale or diversify. The authors propose that incremental digitalising occurs to a great extent during a scaling strategy, and that radical digitalising occurs to a smaller extent during diversification strategies in family farms.

This research uses a sample of family-run farms from the UK agricultural sector to explore nuanced elements of digitalisation. It should therefore be explored in other types of family firms located in different sectors and geographies.

This research is important because family farms are under increasing pressure and have limited financial resources to deal with the digitalisation agenda. Therefore, empirical evidence helps other farms in similar situations. The authors found digitalisation investments, that tend to be capital intensive, only matter for scalers and less so for diversifiers. Family farms can use the model presented as a tool to evaluate their farm. The tool helps them define what to do, and ideate the potential activities that might be digitalised, to feed into their wider strategy.

Family firms, in particular farms, are critical to many economies. The general consenses currently assumes all family firms should digitalise, yet the authors' evidence suggests that this is not the case. It is important to create policies that are sensitive to the needs of different types of businesses, in this case between family firm scalers and diversifiers, instead of simply incentivising digitalisation using a blanket approach usually by offering financial aid. Understanding how digitisation can support (or not) family firm resilience and growth in an effective and efficient manner can have significant benefit to individual firms, and across industries.

The proposed model extends theoretical understanding linking strategy, digitalisation activity and innovation in family farms. It shows that digitalisation is a key building block of scaling strategies, maximising digitalisation to increase efficiency. Yet, diversifying family farms minimise digitalisation, whereby they only digitalise a small amount of the farming activity. This empirical evidence contrasts with the wider narrative that farmers are slower at using new technology. This research found that some are slower because it does not align with their strategy. However, sometimes digitalisation aligns with their strategy during external changes, in which case the diversifiers are quick to act.

This paper aims to investigate how actors in the farmer’s network influence the adoption of smart farming technology (SFT) and to understand how social media affects this adoption process, in particular focusing on the influence of social media on trust in knowledge dissemination within the network.

The methodology used a two-stage process, with semi-structured interviews of farmers, augmented by a netnographic approach appropriate to the social media context.

The analysis illustrates the key role of the farmer network in the dissemination of SFT knowledge, bringing insight into an important B2B context. While social media emerges as a valuable way to connect farmers and promote discussion, it remains underused in knowledge dissemination on SFT. Also, farmers exhibit more trust in the content from peers online rather than from SFT vendors.

Novel insights are gained into the influence of the farming network on the accelerated adoption of SFT, including the potential role of social media in mitigating the homophilous nature of peer-to-peer interactions among farmers through exposure to more diverse actors and information. The use of a social network theory lens has provided new insights into the role of trust in shaping social media influence on the farmer, with variances in farmer trust of information from technology vendors and from peers.

This study examines the adoption drivers of scale-appropriate mechanization in Nepal's maize-based farming systems. The authors also assess the contribution of scale-appropriate mechanization to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of zero hunger (SDG2) and no poverty (SDG1).

Propensity score matching and doubly robust inverse probability-weighted regression adjusted methods were applied to estimate the effects of mini-tiller adoption. These methods control the biases that arise from observed heterogeneities between mini-tillers users and nonusers.

The study findings show that farm size, labor shortages, draft animal scarcity, market proximity, household assets and household heads' educational level influence the adoption of mechanization in Nepal. Mechanized farms exhibited enhanced maize productivity, profits and household food self-sufficiency. Reduced depth and severity of poverty were also observed. Nevertheless, these effects were not uniform; very small farms (≤0.41 ha) facing acute labor shortages benefited the most.

The study results suggest that policymakers in developing nations like Nepal may wish to expand their emphasis on scale-appropriate mechanization to improve farm productivity and household food security, reduce poverty and contribute to the SDGs.

This first-of-its-kind study establishes the causal effects between scale-appropriate farm mechanization and SDG1 (no poverty) and SDG2 (zero hunger) in a developing nation.

This study analyzed the state of broiler production in Senegal after nearly two decades of poultry import restrictions. It provides a synopsis of the Senegalese broiler value chain and evaluates the performance and economics of different broiler farm types.

A multi-stakeholder workshop and interviews were conducted with key informants to investigate the structure and activities of the Senegalese broiler value chain. The typical farm approach (TFA) was used to construct and analyze “typical” farms that represent the most common broiler production systems in Senegal.

The current situation in the Senegalese broiler value chain is favorable for hatcheries, feed mills, producers and poultry traders. However, the slaughterhouses are not faring well. The farm economic analysis demonstrates that typical medium-scale broiler farms are performing well, due to the use of high-quality feed, chicks and good husbandry. Additionally, the analysis revealed that feed and day-old chick (DOC) costs are the most significant in conventional broiler production in Senegal. Despite the high costs of feed and DOCs, broiler production is profitable for typical farms.

Athough this study provides detailed insights into broiler farm economics in Senegal, it does not include typical integrated large-scale broiler farm-types. Based on our findings, we can predict that such farm types may be more efficient and have lower production costs due to the use of high-quality inputs (chicks and feed), and economies of scale. However, future studies will need to verify this prediction.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, only a few unpublished studies on broiler farm economics in Senegal exist. These studies only provide a basic analysis of the cost of production and profitability, with little consideration of various production systems. Contrastingly, this study provides a detailed economic analysis of different types of conventional broiler farms in key production regions.