Acting Collectively to Develop Mid-Scale Food Value Chains

Analysis of selected food value chains

Maize is the most important grain crop in South Africa, being both the major feed grain and the staple food for the majority of the South African population. Figure 1 illustrates that for the 2002/03 marketing year, maize was responsible for the largest contribution (13.78%) to the total gross value of the agricultural production with a gross value of R9.5 billion. Poultry slaughtered followed ...

Arsenic speciation in food chains from mid-Atlantic hydrothermal vents.

Arsenic concentration and speciation were determined in benthic fauna collected from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge hydrothermal vents. The shrimp species, Rimicaris exoculata, the vent chimney-dwelling mussel, Bathymodiolus azoricus, Branchipolynoe seepensis, a commensal worm of B. azoricus, and the gastropod Peltospira smaragdina showed variations in As concentration and in stable isotope (δ13C and δ...

Practical Use Of It In Traceability In Food Value Chains

Traceability is today considered an essential requirement for the food value chain due to the need to provide consumers with accurate information in the event of food safety recalls, to provide assurance with regard the source and production systems for food products and in certain countries to comply with government legislation. Within an individual business traceability can be quite simple to...

A shifting paradigm in strengthening laboratory health systems for global health: acting now, acting collectively, but acting differently.

Improving clinical and public health laboratories should be one of the main goals of strengthening health systems, rather than a desirable afterthought. In this respect, in July 2009, several African countries, donors, the World Health Organization (WHO), and implementing partners met in Kigali, Rwanda, to launch a program for strengthening laboratory management, with the aim to accelerate nati...

Beyond the vertical? Using value chains and governance as a framework to analyse private standards initiatives in agri-food chains