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En búsqueda de avanzar con la caracterización de los agentes y empresas que explican el funcionamiento y la dinámica del aglomerado hortícola de La Plata, se propone identificar y analizar las políticas de la Agencia de Extensión Rural de La Plata (AER La Plata). Para ello, se realizó un análisis del desempeño organizacional y sus principales políticas. La AER La Plata es protagonista del aglomerado hortícola platense, prestando nuevos servicios y modificando el modelo. Dichos cambios son llevados a cabo en el sentido de adoptar y de adaptar la tecnología (convencional y alternativa) dentro de una estructura social heterogénea, básicamente orientando sus políticas para el estrato de productores mayoritarios y más vulnerables, propugnando por su organización y por alternativas productivas y comerciales. Se concluye que el accionar de la Agencia del INTA (analizado) no es de cooperación o competencia para fomentar el mero crecimiento del territorio, sino que funciona como factor de contrapeso en el marco de una etapa de desarrollo que exacerba las inequidades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nursery owners played a critical role in transforming imported plants and trees from scientific specimens into commodities that became widespread in British gardens in the first half of the nineteenth century. This article uses rare surviving business records of London nurserymen to investigate the scale and structure of the nursery trade and its business practices between 1800 and 1850 and how nursery businesses innovated to meet the needs of an emerging middle class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Succession is a persistent topic in recent family business research and garners attention from a wide range of research areas. Strategic and principal-agent approaches discuss the subject from an organizational point of view; gender research takes a sociological viewpoint. The present study assesses the perspectives of those involved in the succession process through a qualitative research approach. Based on in-depth interviews conducted in German horticultural businesses, a comparative analysis serves as the starting point for an inquiry of internal succession processes. With transferability limited to similar cases, results show a range of important factors, affecting the generation-spanning succession process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Value chain development (VCD) initiatives within the horticultural and organic sectors in Africa are promising strategies to improve smallholder welfare. Contracting institutional arrangements are a common feature of VCD initiatives and are increasing in number in sub-Saharan Africa as a way to source organic products from smallholder producers. The objective of this study is to better understand men and women's participation in spice producing households that sell under contract and in conventional market chains in the East Usambaras, Tanzania. We draw on New Institutional Economics, political economy and the value chain analysis framework to assess the potential role of contracting to promote gender equity among smallholder organic horticultural producers. We describe intra-household decision making over resources and marketing, access to benefits of contracting, and labor distribution between men and women in contracting and non-contracting households. We then extend the gender analysis to evaluate the role of gender in contracting and conventional value chains operating within the community and district. Using a cross-sectional research design and data collected through 13 focus group discussions, 54 personal interviews and 156 household questionnaires, we show that contracting reduces transaction costs in the chain compared with the conventional trade. However, norms in the wider political economic context give rise to gendered patterns of participation in both household and chain activities in contracting and non-contracting households. Our findings suggest that contracting does not provide significant opportunities for women in married households to participate and benefit based on limited participation in decision-making and access to trainings. Divorced women and widows gain access to contract employment opportunities to earn income. This study highlights the importance of understanding gender relations in the household and community to guide the development of gender equitable VCD initiatives and contracting approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Australia is an island nation and a primary producer of agricultural and horticultural products. There is a large diversity of plant biosecurity threats which could adversely impact on Australia's production and exports. Surveillance has traditionally been used to monitor pests and optimise production. Increasingly surveillance is being used for early detection of exotic incursions, demonstration of eradication of incursions and pest freedom from exotic or endemic pests. These newer uses of surveillance utilise general and specific surveillance: surveillance data is maintained in electronic databases. Specific surveillance is a targeted surveillance search used by industry or state regulators for a specific pest to support pest freedom or other trade standards. The plant biosecurity surveillance cycle shows the flow of surveillance operations. In this paper, this cycle is demonstrated by case studies including pre border and the northern Australian at-border surveillance for the Australian-Asian interface. Within Australia, the multiple plant pest surveillance program was established in most capital cities where there are high flows of population and produce. As an industry example, the cotton industry surveillance program, particularly for cotton leaf curl, demonstrates how plant biosecurity surveillance operates within an industry. Asiatic citrus canker is another example of industry pertinent surveillance. Finally, surveillance for the purpose of declaring pest freedom areas is reviewed using fruit flies and currant lettuce aphid as examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

German horticulture, as well as horticulture and agriculture in other industrialized countries, faces increasing skilled labor shortage. Additionally family run businesses in horticulture and agriculture are lacking a new generation of entrepreneurs, leading to increased structural change. Insights about job attributes attractiveness as well as their impact on job satisfaction lead to a more transparent environment in which employers and employees can make better-informed decisions and redesign the professional environment, resulting in increased job satisfaction, performance and career sustainability. For this purpose, a survey was undertaken from August 2013 to February 2015 through a questionnaire examining the preferences and perception of employees (N=229) regarding job characteristics. The theoretical background of the study is Warr's vitamin model, which assumes non-linear relationships between job characteristics and job satisfaction. The strongest connections with job satisfaction among employees are with future prospects and conflict between work-and-family. The study is one of the first of its kind to provide a detailed overview of job satisfaction of different groups of employees in German horticulture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysing a unique, domain-similar database including all horticulturalists in a major flower-producing country, this paper shows that a firm’s central position in a network significantly improves its financial performance. The effect of strategic positioning in a network is in large part mediated through its enhanced innovativeness. Strategically positioning in a network of firms contributesmoreto firm performance,bothdirectly as well as indirectly, than other strategic options a firm has available, such as seeking scale, seeking to diversify, pursuing cost advantages, or locating in a cluster. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

ABSTRACT The present study employed a choice experiment to forecast the adoption of private GLOBALG.A.P. standards among Thai horticultural producers. It is based on primary data from 400 orchid and mango producers from the major production areas in Thailand. Mixed logit model estimations show that producers with higher levels of education and awareness about environmental and social requirements are more likely to adopt GLOBALG.A.P. standards. Prior experience in high-value market channels and with public Good Agricultural Practice standards are also crucial factors that motivate producers to adopt GLOBALG.A.P. standards. However, certification costs and time needed for record keeping and training are major adoption barriers. Against this background, we propose more education and stakeholder workshops to increase the likelihood of adoption among Thai horticultural producers. The formation of regular discussion groups would allow fruitful interaction among producers and with advisors, eventually providing vital links between implementation of standards and day-to-day farm practices. [EconLit citation: Q13]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the strategies of incumbents that seek to develop discontinuous innovations within the boundaries of a mature innovation system. Mature innovation systems do not provide support for these discontinuous innovations. This article focuses on exploring why incumbents in these setting engage in discontinuous innovation and what strategies they deploy to become successful. We analyse 10 cases of incumbents developing discontinuous innovations in the mature Dutch greenhouse horticulture sector. The results of our analysis show that the incumbents are primarily triggered by dissatisfaction with the current way of doing business and that the existing institutions are the main barrier to discontinuous innovation. In response, the incumbents try to circumvent the existing innovation system in their innovation process, but when successful also engage in changing the existing innovation system. This paper contributes to the understanding of the role of incumbents as source of discontinuous innovation in mature innovation systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on transfer of horticultural skills and knowledges with Pacific Island seasonal workers in Australia. It explores the Australian Seasonal Worker Programme (SWP), migration and development of migrants, and the article "Migration and Development in Low-income Countries: A Role for Destination Country Policy?," by Graeme Hugo.

Private standards are spreading rapidly in international food production and trade, and are moving beyond food quality and safety aspect to address environmental and social concerns. We examine how effective private standards are in improving employment conditions in global food supply chains. Using panel data from own company and worker surveys and different econometric techniques, we analyze how the adoption of a variety of private standards, that differ with respect to their focus on labor, influences employment conditions in production, processing and exporting companies in the horticultural export chain in Peru. We find that workers employed in companies adopting private labor standards are more likely to be paid a minimum wage, to have a contract and to receive training but there is no effect of private standards on the level of the wage and on the employment period. We conclude that labor standards are most effective in reinforcing the respect of national labor laws and when there exists a clear cut definition on the employment requirements they push forward. Despite the existence of labor regulations at the national level and the wide-spread use of private labor standards, ethical labor concerns do remain an issue in the Peruvian horticultural export sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]