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The purpose of this paper is to identify Brazilian and Chinese cultural, managerial and negotiation factors that can influence the beef trade between the two countries.

First, a matrix based on reliable secondary sources was established created upon indicators of economic, financial, policy, administrative, cultural, demographic, knowledge, global connectedness and geographic distance between the two countries. This was combined with primary data from interviews conducted with two key stakeholders of the supply chain, namely, the Brazilian agricultural attaché to China, and the director of Apex-Brasil. The results were analysed in a qualitative descriptive manner.

Cultural and political distances between Brazil and China are the most profound origins of challenges in negotiations on both the private and public level.

The interviews were limited in number and to the Brazilian portion of agents involved in the beef trade (diplomats and APEX representative). The low number of interviews might be a limiting factor of the investigation. However, the interviewees’ key position in the supply chain and data triangulation with secondary sources equilibrates the results’ trustworthiness.

China and Brazil are becoming important players in the international market. Brazil has become a leader in the production and export of agricultural commodities. Brazil is the first producer or the second exporter of coffee, soybean, ethanol, poultry, sugar and beef. In 2009, China became Brazil’s top partner in trade (Xi, 2016). In 2015, Brazil exported $35.6bn to and imported $30.7bn from China. In the foreseeable future China will continue to be the most dynamic economy worldwide. This trade dynamic can be a source of opportunities for Chinese and Brazilian enterprises.

Information collected and conclusions drawn from the research are unique in scientific and management literature related to this specific topic, and can be of great value for stakeholders, traders and diplomats in the Sino-Brazilian trade.

Studies on developed economies showed that imposing taxes on animal-based foods could effectively reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions (AGHGEs), while this taxation may not be appropriate in developing countries due to the complex nutritional status across income classes. Hence, this study aims to explore optimal tax rate levels considering both emission reduction and nutrient intake, and examine the heterogenous effects of taxation across various income classes in urban and rural China.

The authors estimated the Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System model to calculate the price elasticities for eight food groups, and performed three simulations to explore the relative optimal tax regions via the relationships between effective animal protein intake loss and AGHGE reduction by taxes.

The results showed that the optimal tax rate bands can be found, depending on the reference levels of animal protein intake. Designing taxes on beef, mutton and pork could be a preliminary option for reducing AGHGEs in China, but subsidy policy should be designed for low-income populations at the same time. Generally, urban residents have more potential to reduce AGHGEs than rural residents, and higher income classes reduce more AGHGEs than lower income classes.

This study fills the gap in the literature by developing the methods to design taxes on animal-based foods from the perspectives of both nutrient intake and emission reduction. This methodology can also be applied to analyze food taxes and GHGE issues in other developing countries.

The flow of the Sino-Brazilian frozen beef trade has intensified. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to characterize the supply chain structure, and identify its major fragilities.

Supply chain mapping was conducted based on the existing literature and primary data collection. Key stakeholders were detected and questioned through semi-structured interviews, which were later interpreted with content analysis.

The results reveal a low degree of chain coordination from the Brazilian farm to the Chinese consumer, arising from an immature traceability mechanism, a limited flow of reliable information between the segments, and low trust between the stakeholders.

The infancy of the beef trade, the paucity of literature on the topic, and restricted accessibility to key governmental and official materials imposes limits on the available information. Language and cultural barriers might have also impacted the interviewees’ responses. However, the participation of Brazilian and Chinese academics in both the interview analysis and chain mapping mitigates these shortcomings.

The Brazilian public and private sectors need to establish a reliable traceability system and information platform. This, together with investments in marketing and branding, would facilitate differential responses among traders and consumers, and, hence, improve supply chain sustainability.

By adopting an inter-country approach and directly sourcing views from specific key figures in the supply chain this study offers some unique insights and contributes to the literature on the emergence of a multi-polar global food trade.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and compare the costs of price and income subsidies when the food security policy targets the urban poor. The result may help policymakers choose a desired subsidy scheme to ensure food security for the urban poor facing food price surge.

The analysis consists of three parts: constructing an empirical model on provincial panel data in 1993‐2009 estimating the impact of grain price on food security among urban residents by different income level; evaluating the potential costs of shifting to income subsidy aiming to maintain the real income levels of the low income, lowest income or the poor residents if grain price increases by 20 percent; and comparing with the cost of price subsidy to achieve the same policy goal.

The paper finds that, food price surge will hurt the urban poor much more seriously than the high income population; the rich residents may receive more benefit from price subsidy; and income subsidy has obviously a cost advantage while the targeted people benefit more.

The obvious value of the paper is to show that income subsidy is much more desired than price subsidy, if the policy goal is to help the poor during food price surge.

China and India have to provide food security to 1.36 billion and 1.25 billion populations, respectively. The purpose of this paper is to address the roles of trade and stock management in achieving food security in these countries, such as the impacts of trade on consumer and producer prices and incomes of farmers and others and implications for food security, and the impact of stock management on price stability, availability, access and nutrition.

The paper is based on secondary data and literature on these issues. It compares the policy tools of trade and stock management used in India and China for food security purpose, in terms of long-term efficiency, in order to provide better understanding on how to achieve food security through public interventions.

Although stock is an important tool for food security, it is likely to be costly if used for price support and redistribution purposes. Trade might provide cheap food to enhance access to food, the impact on domestic producers and the volatility in world market may lead to serious problems. A carefully designed policy combining stock management and trade may help achieving food security.

This paper relies on existing literature of current issues and policies, and tries to conduct comparative study on India and China, the two largest countries in the world. The scale and depth of the study are restricted by authors’ knowledge, hence may not be adequate in addressing those important issues.

Both India and China are undergoing policy review regarding food security, under pressures in domestic market and from multi-nation negotiations. This study may provide better understandings of the issues related to policy reform and trade negotiation.

Though a large portion of factual materials are adopted from existing literature and statistics, the analyses are those of authors.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the China Agricultural Economic Review (CAER)'s second annual conference, which was organized by the CAER editorial office and International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

The conference theme was “Agriculture and the Wealth of Nations”, aiming to explore the importance of agriculture as well as the relationship and interaction between agriculture and the whole economy. The attendees from 14 countries discussed the related issues, and a number of distinguished scholars and policy makers were also invited to present at the conference. This summary presents the topics covered at the conference and highlights discussion points.

Action items were identified which could be appropriately organized into the following sections: agricultural trade and rural labor issues; rural governance and public policy; climate change and food security; rural land and rural finance issues.

The paper illustrates how the academic platform established by the CAER‐IFPRI conference, enables scholars from varied cultures and fields to get together to share their researches and ideas.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the distributional characteristics and evolutional patterns in source periodicals, topics, authors, funding, and institutes of research papers in Chinese Agricultural Economics so as to understand the current situations and developmental tendency of Chinese agricultural economics research over the past decade.

Using the citation analysis method, this paper analyzed the distributional characteristics and evolution of source periodicals, fields, authors and topics of 2,203 highly cited journal papers from the database of China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and 189 cited journal papers from database of Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) in agricultural economics first-authored by Chinese scholars from 2006 to 2015.

First, over the past decade, agricultural economics research in China has seen a rapid development. Specially, 103 scholars and 42 institutes have played key roles in the development, and 12 Chinese periodicals and 3 international journals have been the most influential outlets. Second, the coverage of the topics in Chinese agricultural economics research is broad and has expanded over the past decade. The rural land issue has been the most popular topic, while the issues regarding rural institutional arrangements and industrialization in rural areas have been explored extensively. However, issues in other fields, such as agricultural markets and trade, rural labor, food safety, etc. have to be further studied. Third, the improvements of economic theory and quantitative analytic techniques, the supports from research funding, and an increase in the collaboration between Chinese scholars and those from other countries have made great contribution to the rapid development of Chinese agricultural economics research over the past decade.

This paper is an original work that identifies the most influential journal papers including highly cited journal papers from CNKI and cited journal papers from SSCI, using citation frequency and standard Essential Science Indicators method. This is a contribution relative to the methods used by previous studies, which did not account for frequency of citation of a paper. Moreover, this study is based on data from two databases, CNKI and SSCI, suggesting that the coverage of sample papers is broader compared to those of previous studies.

Previous studies have mainly focused on public opinions regarding genetically modified (GM) technology and GM food. The purpose of this paper is to assess scientists’ attitudes on whether China needs to develop its national agricultural GM technology and their willingness to buy GM food.

A stratified sampling method was used to select and interview 806 scientists from six major agricultural universities and 20 research institutes under two national academies in China in 2013. Based on these data, the authors use both descriptive statistics and multivariate regression analysis to examine scientists’ attitudes toward agricultural GM technology and food, using GM soybean oil as an example of GM foods.

The survey results show that nearly three-quarters of scientists agree that China needs to develop its agricultural GM technology, but their attitudes differ largely. Only 29 percent of scientists are willing to buy GM soybean oil, similar to urban consumers (25 percent) in China. The knowledge of biology is extensive for some scientists but varies significant among scientists and correlates positively with their attitudes toward agricultural GM technology and GM soybean oil. Younger and male scientists with higher professional titles, and those involved in GM research are more in favor of China’s GM technology compared to other scientists. Female scientists, scientists with lower professional titles, those that have never engaged in GM research or are from non-agricultural scientific disciplines are less willing to buy GM soybean oil. Interestingly, their low willingness to buy GM soybean oil is inconsistent with the fact that it is the most common edible oil in China.

This study is the first to examine scientists’ attitudes toward GM technology and food in China. The results of this study contribute to understanding the current debates on GM technology and the relevance of research, based on the willingness to buy GM food, for decision making regarding the commercialization of GM technology.

The purpose of this paper is to examine farmer preference for swine price index insurance in China focusing on whether Chinese farmers are willing to consider purchasing swine price index insurance, the premium they would like to pay, as well as the extend of heterogeneity in their preferences.

A sample of 443 swine farmers in Jiangsu and Henan provinces is collected and analyzed. An Ordered Probit model is used to analyze farmers’ willingness to buy swine price index insurance and a Tobit model is used to analyze farmers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for insurance premium.

Results show that some farmers are not willing to purchase swine price index insurance. However, WTP of majority of farmers is higher than what is prescribed in the current insurance policy. Factors affecting farmers’ willingness to buy varied between two provinces. Experience in purchasing traditional swine insurance and risk perception affect farmers’ willingness to buy in Jiangsu province, while joining agricultural cooperatives, experience in purchasing traditional swine insurance and understanding of swine price index insurance affect farmers’ willingness to buy in Henan province. Farmers with non-agricultural income, longer years of swine breeding, higher degree of specialization, experience in purchasing traditional insurance, higher understanding of swine price index insurance and trust in local governments, stronger risk perception and risk preference, and not being a member of agricultural cooperatives have higher WTP.

Few studies have been conducted on swine price index insurance in China. Even less information, to the authors’ knowledge, is available on farmer preferences. The research provides a timely contribution to understand the Chinese swine price index insurance market from the perspectives of farmers.