A decision support system to assist cage aquaculture managers is presented. The system enables managers to perform four essential tasks: (i) site classification, (ii) site selection, (iii) holding capacity determination, and (iv) economic appraisal of an aquaculture farm at a given site. Based on measurements of water and substrate qualities, hydrometeorology and socioeconomic factors, a cage a...

Johne's disease (JD) is caused by infection with the organism Mycobacterium avium spp. paratuberculosis, leading to chronic diarrhoea and ill thrift in adult cattle. JD is considered to adversely affect farm performance and profitability. This retrospective case study was undertaken on a single commercial dairy herd in the south west of Ireland. Animal production records were interrogated to as...

The study intended to evaluate the impact of WTO on domestic prices, production and consumption of major food commodities like wheat and rice and ultimately their impact on the producer’s and consumer’s surpluses. The farm level impact was also evaluated to chalk out the eventual position at farm level with the purpose to identify necessary policies and actions to cope with the new world situat...

Important agricultural commodity prices more than tripled from prices observed in 2005 and 2006 to those observed in the spring and summer of 2008. Prices subsequently fell precipitously so that by early November 2008 (and continuing in the subsequent few months), the near-term futures prices of corn, wheat, and soybeans stood about 50–70% higher than before the price run-up began.1 The huge pe...

The Australian Government is meeting the challenge of water scarcity and climate change through significant on-farm infrastructure investment to increase water use efficiency and productivity, and secure longer term water supplies. However, it is likely that on-farm infrastructure investment will alter energy consumption and therefore generate considerable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, sugges...

Studies of entrepreneurship in the developing world have largely focused on understand­ ing barriers to the expansion of existing microenterprises. Using data from a unique panel of coffee-farming households in Tanzania, we show that intermittent, low-capital entrepreneurial activity in fact plays an important, and hitherto ignored, role as a smooth­ ing mechanism in response to shocks to agric...

Abstract A typical characteristic of the wine supply chain in Old World is significant share cooperatives wine-making that coexists with investor-owned firms and on-farm wine-makers. This paper analyzes determinants whether grape growers deliver their grapes to a cooperative winery which they are members, sell outside wineries, or make own on farm. Our analysis based data from wine-producing ar...

A study was conducted between May 2013 and August 2014 in three provinces of Vietnam to investigate financial impacts of swine diseases in pig holdings in 2010-2013. The aim of the study was to quantify the costs of swine diseases at producer level in order to understand swine disease priority for monitoring at local level. Financial impacts of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRR...