Sustainable Agricultural Marketing And Agribusiness Development

The future of Africa and the whole globe is dependent on sustainable agribusiness management. This book offers insights to a wide range of agricultural marketing and agribusiness management practices with a focus on sustainability. It is designed to provide academics and graduate students in business studies with a comprehensive treatment of the nature of agricultural marketing and agribusiness management, as well as sustainability transitions and related practices in certain regions of the world (particularly in Africa). The text also serves as an invaluable resource for agricultural marketing practitioners requiring more than anecdotal evidence on the structure and operation of agricultural marketing and agribusiness management, as well as sustainability in different organisations and geographical areas. It allows the reader to compare and contrast agricultural marketing and agribusiness management, as well as sustainability practices across different research methodologies and settings. The book provides a unique mix of theory, reviews, primary research findings and case studies.

This practical publication gives farmers, Extension advisors, agents, teachers, farm suppliers, and community and environmental activists a way to teach real-world sustainable farming techniques and to encourage a broad information exchange among those involved in sustainable agriculture research.

Between 2013 and 2015, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) undertook a survey of innovative approaches that enable markets to act as incentives in the transition towards sustainable agriculture in developing countries. Through a competitive selection process, 15 cases from around the world provide insights into how small-scale initiatives that use sustainable production practices are supported by market demand, and create innovations in the institutions that govern sustainable practices and market exchanges. These cases respond to both local and distant consumers’ concerns about the quality of the food that they eat. The book evidences that the initiatives rely upon social values (e.g. trustworthiness, health [nutrition and food safety], food sovereignty, promotion of youth and rural development, farmer and community livelihoods) to adapt sustainable practices to local contexts, while creating new market outlets for food products. Specifically, private sector and civil society actors are leading partnerships with the public sector to build market infrastructure, integrate sustainable agriculture into private and public education and extension programmes, and ensure the exchange of transparent information about market opportunities. The results are: (i) system innovations that allow new rules for marketing and assuring the sustainable qualities of products; (ii) new forms of organization that permit actors to play multiple roles in the food system (e.g. farmer and auditor, farmer and researcher, consumer and auditor, consumer and intermediary); (iii) new forms of market exchange, such as box schemes, university kiosks, public procurement or systems of seed exchanges; and (iv) new technologies for sustainable agriculture (e.g. effective micro-organisms, biopesticides and soil analysis techniques). The public sector plays a key role in providing legitimate political and physical spaces for multiple actors to jointly create and share sustainable agricultural knowledge, practices and products.

This book provides a non-technical, accessible primer on sustainable agricultural development and its relationship to sustainable development based on three analytical pillars. The first is to understand agriculture as complex physical-biological-human systems. Second is the economic perspective of understanding tradeoffs and synergies among the economic, environmental and social dimensions of these systems at farm, regional and global scales. Third is the understanding of these agricultural systems as the supply side of one sector of a growing economy, interacting through markets and policies with other sectors at local, national and global scales. The first part of the book introduces the concept of sustainability and develops an analytical framework based on tradeoffs quantified using impact indicators in the economic, environmental and social domains, linking this framework to the role of agriculture in economic growth and development. Next the authors introduce the reader to the sustainability challenges of major agroecosystems in the developing and industrialized worlds. The concluding chapter discusses the design and implementation of sustainable development pathways, through the expression of consumers’ desire for sustainably produced foods on the demand side of the food system, and through policies on the supply side such as new more sustainable technologies, environmental regulation and payments for ecosystem services.

In the agricultural industry, factors such as environmental degradation, resource constraints, and climate change have left traditional agricultural practices inadequate in meeting the growing global food demand. Simultaneously, the marketing landscape is evolving rapidly due to technological advancements, changing consumer preferences, and the rise of online platforms. Both agriculture and marketing are faced with the critical task of adapting and embracing sustainability in this ever-changing environment. Sustainable Practices for Agriculture and Marketing Convergence offers a comprehensive solution to these pressing issues. This book is a practical blueprint for transforming the agricultural industry and revitalizing marketing strategies in the name of sustainability. At its core, the book aims to highlight the monumental significance of sustainable agriculture in mitigating the long-standing environmental impacts of conventional farming methods. It does so by presenting real-world case studies and best practices, inspiring and motivating the widespread adoption of sustainable agriculture.

This book presents a collection of ten empirical studies on Iran’s sustainable agriculture and agribusiness, grouped into three domains: agricultural prices and commodity market analysis; risk management and climate change; and natural resources and environmental economics. The various studies elaborate on sustainable agriculture, climate change, pest management, natural resources, land-use, agricultural marketing, risk management and insurance in Iran’s agricultural sector. The book also introduces the key microeconomic principles that are applied to agriculture from a suitability perspective, and provides policy recommendation to decision makers and agricultural-product producers. As such it serves as a supplement to textbooks on applied economics, agricultural and environmental economics, and offers students and professionals in agricultural economics, resource economics, risk management, and food policy as well as general economists real-world examples of the principles under discussion. Further, it includes an extensive range of case studies from different regions of the country, which could be applied in agricultural policy making process, making it a useful resource for agricultural planners and decision makers in government agencies.