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Demand for organic food has increased tremendously over the last decade in the United States. In the Southeast, high demand for organic food has sparked interest in organic production techniques among conventional vegetable growers and put increasing demand on existing organic growers. However, little information is available on profitable organic vegetable crops suitable for the region. This study analyzes crop rotation systems for high-value, cool-season vegetables to develop production and economic models to help growers increase profit and reduce risk.

Agriculture accounts for 17% of total Bangladeshi GDP. Bananas represent 20% of all fruits crops produced in Bangladesh, with a domestic market share of 36%. This study analyzes banana production, marketing, distribution, and value chain functions and relationships. The study focused on the major banana producing area of Bangladesh. Our results show that the major problems are lack of good agricultural practices, which affects overall quality, distribution, and marketing of this important fruit.

With 29.7 million tons per annum, India produces 20% of world banana production. Despite this success, the country is not ranked as either a major or a minor banana exporting country. The goal of this exploratory research was to evaluate the banana sector in the banana producing areas of Kolkata, West Bengal State of India, in order to identify possible strengths and weaknesses that might impact the complete banana value chain (VC). We found major problems in the complete value chain, including production, transportation, distribution, marketing, and overall quality.

The Quadratic AIDS model was estimated to analyze the U.S. fruit consumption using annual per capita consumption data and prices for a demand system consisting of fresh fruit, fruit juice and other processed fruit. All Marshallian own price elasticities are found to be negative and the demand system is dominated by complementarity relationships. Both own and cross price Marshallian elasticities are less than one. Fruit juices are found to be expenditure elastic conditional on the total expenditure on fruits while fresh fruits and other processed fruits are found to be expenditure inelastic. However, fresh fruit is close to being unitary expenditure elastic. After allowing for curvature in the Engel function, U.S. fresh fruit demand is found to be more responsive to changes in income than in previous studies.

We estimate a dynamic version of an almost ideal demand system (AIDS) model for U.S.A. imports of fresh tropical fruits: bananas, pineapples, avocadoes, papayas, mangoes/guavas, grapes and other fresh fruit imports. An error correction model specification is justified after unit root and cointegration test results confirm nonstationarity and cointegration of the data. Estimated income elasticities show that fresh grapes and other fresh fruit imports appear to be considered luxury commodities. All own-price elasticities were negative and significant. While imported bananas, pineapples, U.S.A. grapes and other fresh fruit were quite inelastic, demand for papayas and mangoes/guavas were elastic. Fresh fruits that are shown to be complementary to imported fruits include bananas, imported grapes, U.S.A. grapes and avocados, and imported avocados/other fresh fruits. Key

Prevalence of local foods is believed to answer several food issues one of which is health and nutrition. This study focused on the on the availability of local foods to consumers and see its relationship with two specific diet-related diseases namely, obesity and diabetes. Other variables were included in the analysis to provide additional evidence to previous findings. Factors considered are divided into 5 groups namely diet-, local food-, environment-, education- and gender-related factors. Diet- and environment-related variables provide the most perceptive findings while local food variables provided significant however weak evidence of positive impacts to health and nutrition.

This study estimates U.S. demand for imported apple juice by exporting country. Given that China has emerged as the top supplier to the U.S., we focus on the impact of China on competing exporting countries. Results show that U.S. imports from Argentina, Chile, and the rest of the world (ROW) were significantly responsive to apple juice prices in China. U.S. imports from China were significantly responsive to prices in Argentina, Chile and the ROW as well; however, the responsiveness of imports from China to apple juice prices in these countries was relatively smaller than the responsiveness of imports from these countries to China’s price.