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Full-Text Articles in Agribusiness

On-Site Sensory Experience Boosts Acceptance Of Cultivated Chicken, Mark Chong, Angela K. Y. Leung, Tricia Marjorie Fernandez Jun 2024

On-Site Sensory Experience Boosts Acceptance Of Cultivated Chicken, Mark Chong, Angela K. Y. Leung, Tricia Marjorie Fernandez

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study set out to assess if presenting cultivated chicken in the context of a familiar meal, in a familiar dining setting, would motivate repeat consumption and recommendation. A survey of 107 diners was conducted at Huber's Butchery and Bistro in Singapore – the world's first butchery to serve cultivated meat – from April to June 2023. The findings showed that eating cultivated chicken significantly boosted post-consumption acceptance levels. In addition, cultivated chicken's tastiness may be a more important factor than its integration into a familiar meal or dish in fostering repeat consumption. Implications for the cultivated meat industry, limitations, …


Why Do Farmers’ Cooperatives Fail In A Market Economy? Rediscovering Chayanov With The Chinese Experience, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson Oct 2023

Why Do Farmers’ Cooperatives Fail In A Market Economy? Rediscovering Chayanov With The Chinese Experience, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In The Theory of Peasant Cooperatives, Chayanov develops the theories of differential optima and vertical integration, which stress the vulnerability of peasant farming in capitalist markets, and argues that cooperatives can support smallholders only if they operate as ‘a cooperative movement’, are buttressed by a strong ‘cooperative culture’, and achieve ‘vertical integration’. Based on extensive fieldwork in China, we identify six major obstacles that explain the failure of most cooperatives. Chayanov’s arguments caution us to not only the vital importance of cooperatives to the resilience of peasant farming, but also the apparently insurmountable obstacles that cooperatives face in market economies.


Social Acceptance Vital To Success Of Novel Food Technologies, Mark Chong, Mark Chong May 2023

Social Acceptance Vital To Success Of Novel Food Technologies, Mark Chong, Mark Chong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a joint commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Communication Management (Practice) Mark Chong and Andrew Powell , CEO of Asia BioBusiness Pte Ltd, discussed how social acceptance is vital to the success of novel food technologies. They also explained how companies should be guided by the science of risk perception and behavioural science, and why a risk communication and engagement strategy is an essential component of risk management.


Agriculture And Sustainable Farming In Vietnam, Minh Hoan Le Oct 2022

Agriculture And Sustainable Farming In Vietnam, Minh Hoan Le

Asian Management Insights

Le Minh Hoan, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Vietnam, talks about the future of sustainable agriculture in ASEAN.


Building A Sustainable End-To-End Aquaculture Solution, Gibran Huzaifah Oct 2022

Building A Sustainable End-To-End Aquaculture Solution, Gibran Huzaifah

Asian Management Insights

Gibran Huzaifah, founder and CEO of eFishery, speaks about his entrepreneurial journey in the aquaculture space.


A Study On The Ore Grade, Operating Costs And Investment Value Of Iron Ore Miners Amid China's "Dual Carbon" Policy, Shunyi Yao Sep 2022

A Study On The Ore Grade, Operating Costs And Investment Value Of Iron Ore Miners Amid China's "Dual Carbon" Policy, Shunyi Yao

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

With the growing demand for steel in significant economies, iron ore remains a vital investment in the long run. Although many iron ore miners have recently generated significant returns for investors, some have not performed well financially. The existing literature does not provide an integrated theoretical framework to explain this problem. The study examines the mechanisms determining the investment value of iron ore miners when China establishes carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals ("Dual Carbon" policy). Further, based on the findings, this study also proposes investment strategies for iron ore miners in the future, which also has a high practical …


Economic And Environmental Implications Of Biomass Commercialization In Agricultural Processing, Bin Li, Onur Boyabatli, Buket Avci Jul 2022

Economic And Environmental Implications Of Biomass Commercialization In Agricultural Processing, Bin Li, Onur Boyabatli, Buket Avci

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Motivated by the agricultural industries, this paper studies the economic and environmental implications of biomass commercialization; that is, converting organic waste into a saleable product, from the perspective of a processor that uses a commodity input to produce both a commodity output and biomass. We characterize the economic value of biomass commercializa- tion and examine how input and output spot price uncertainties affect this value. Using a model calibration, we find that lower input spot price variability or higher output spot price variabil- ity or correlation between the two spot prices increases this value for a typical palm oil mill. …


Endogeneity Of Commodity Price In Freight Cost Models, Kian Guan Lim Jun 2022

Endogeneity Of Commodity Price In Freight Cost Models, Kian Guan Lim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper, we answer a novel question on how the value of goods carried can affect the freight cost. We focus on the issue based on a more specialized freight market involving transport of seaborne iron ore from mining ports to Qingdao in China during the period 2014 to 2019. We construct simultaneous systems of demand–supply equations on both the iron ore market and the freight market. In the models, we explain how endogeneity of iron ore as a regressor can arise due to the nexus between the two markets, and that the freight demand is largely a derived …


The Resilience Of Diversified Clusters: Reconfiguring Commodity Networks In Rural China During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang Mar 2022

The Resilience Of Diversified Clusters: Reconfiguring Commodity Networks In Rural China During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

We conceptualize typical rural communities in China as diversified economic clusters. In normal times, economic actors in these communities rarely cooperate with each other, but are integrated into separate commodity chains. These “diversified clusters”, however, show resilience and flexibility when an external shock—the COVID-19 pandemic—disrupts the spatial connections throughout the existing commodity chains. In this study, we use primary field data collected from one typical rural community in Northern China to show how economic diversity, aided by social networks and space-shrinking technologies, allowed for the vertical commodity chains to be reconfigured temporarily into localized horizontal commodity networks to cope with …


Producing Industrial Pigs In Southwestern China: The Rise Of Contract Farming As A Coevolutionary Process, Forrest Qian Zhang, Hongping Zeng Jan 2022

Producing Industrial Pigs In Southwestern China: The Rise Of Contract Farming As A Coevolutionary Process, Forrest Qian Zhang, Hongping Zeng

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The literature on contract farming (CF) has to date focused on how outside capital uses CF to vertically integrate non-capitalist producers into agro-industrial value chains. We argue that in places where multiple dynamics of capitalist growth co-exist, CF relationships can also emerge between different types of capitalist producers that are already in capitalist production using other organizational forms. In this situation, the well-studied drivers that fuel the spread of CF become less consequential; the emergence of CF is instead more contingent on the complex interactions between producers and the specific conditions and events in the local environment. We conceptualize the …


Farmers In Singapore? Collective Action Under Adverse Circumstances, Yu Fong Ho, John A. Donaldson Mar 2021

Farmers In Singapore? Collective Action Under Adverse Circumstances, Yu Fong Ho, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

How can individuals with contrasting interests in a declining industry, at odds with the country’s identity, and facing an illiberal and sceptical government, band together to promote collective goals? This article addresses this question by examining Singapore’s Kranji Countryside Association, one of Singapore’s few civil society organisations to focus on community organising. To Association members, the material and time costs of organising were high, the odds of success were low and the material rewards of success were modest. The article evaluates two views that purport to explain collective action: the rational choice approach that focuses on selective incentives and the …


Becoming Citizens: Policy Feedback And The Transformation Of The Thai Rice Farmer, Jacob Ricks, Thanapan Laiprakobsub Jan 2021

Becoming Citizens: Policy Feedback And The Transformation Of The Thai Rice Farmer, Jacob Ricks, Thanapan Laiprakobsub

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Over the past twenty years, Thailand’s rice farmers have become one of the country’s most important and active political constituencies, a sharp contrast from the previous decades wherein they were treated with neglect or even derision by the Thai political elite. These “political peasants” now actively advocate for and successfully receive extensive subsidies from both authoritarian and democratic governments. What has driven this change? In this essay, we draw on theories of the policy feedback loop wherein policies yield both material and cognitive benefits, which change the political behavior of populations. We argue that the Thaksin Shinawatra government’s (2001-2006) paddy …


The Spatial And Temporal Impact Of Agricultural Crop Residual Burning On Local Land Surface Temperature In Three Provinces Across China From 2015 To 2017, Wenting Zhang, Mengmeng Yu, Qingqing He, Tianwei Wang, Lu Lin, Kai Cao, Wei Huang, Peihong Fu, Jiaxin Chen Dec 2020

The Spatial And Temporal Impact Of Agricultural Crop Residual Burning On Local Land Surface Temperature In Three Provinces Across China From 2015 To 2017, Wenting Zhang, Mengmeng Yu, Qingqing He, Tianwei Wang, Lu Lin, Kai Cao, Wei Huang, Peihong Fu, Jiaxin Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

China has suffered from severe crop residue burning (CRB) for a long time. As a type of biomass burning, CRB leads to a huge alteration in climate due to the emission of greenhouse gases and particulates in the atmosphere and damages to surface characteristics on land. At present, a growing body of research focuses on the impact of biomass burning (BB) (e.g., forest fire, grass fire, and CRB) on climate change from the aspect of atmospheric process. Meanwhile, a small number of research studies have started to pay attention on the damage caused by BB (e.g. forest fire) on land …


Pinduoduo: Empowering Farmers With An E-Commerce Platform, Hao Liang, Sin Mei Cheah Nov 2020

Pinduoduo: Empowering Farmers With An E-Commerce Platform, Hao Liang, Sin Mei Cheah

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A case study on how Pinduoduo's dedicated portal has helped farmers during the Covid-19 outbreak.


Oil At Risk: Political Violence And Accelerated Carbon Extraction In The Middle East And North Africa, Ryan Knowles Merrill, Anthony W. Orlando Oct 2020

Oil At Risk: Political Violence And Accelerated Carbon Extraction In The Middle East And North Africa, Ryan Knowles Merrill, Anthony W. Orlando

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

What effect does the threat of expropriation have on resource extraction? Much of the economic literature suggests that uncertainty reduces investment, but the theory of risk-induced extraction suggests the opposite. In this paper, we test this theory in the context of political violence, which poses a real threat of state destabilization and violent expropriation of property rights. Facing this uncertainty, we find that oil producers in the Middle East and North Africa increase oil production in response to political violence. This finding has important negative consequences for the world in terms of climate change and demonstrates a previously untested mechanism …


Predictive Insights For Improving The Resilience Of Global Food Security Using Artificial Intelligence, Meng Leong How, Yong Jiet Chan, Sin Mei Cheah Aug 2020

Predictive Insights For Improving The Resilience Of Global Food Security Using Artificial Intelligence, Meng Leong How, Yong Jiet Chan, Sin Mei Cheah

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Unabated pressures on food systems affect food security on a global scale. A human-centric artificial intelligence-based probabilistic approach is used in this paper to perform a unified analysis of data from the Global Food Security Index (GFSI). The significance of this intuitive probabilistic reasoning approach for predictive forecasting lies in its simplicity and user-friendliness to people who may not be trained in classical computer science or in software programming. In this approach, predictive modeling using a counterfactual probabilistic reasoning analysis of the GFSI dataset can be utilized to reveal the interplay and tensions between the variables that underlie food affordability, …


Economic And Environmental Implications Of Biomass Commercialization In Agricultural Processing, Bin Li, Onur Boyabatli, Buket Avci Feb 2020

Economic And Environmental Implications Of Biomass Commercialization In Agricultural Processing, Bin Li, Onur Boyabatli, Buket Avci

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School of Business

Motivated by the agricultural industries, this paper studies the economic and environmental implications of biomass commercialization; that is, converting organic waste into a saleable product, from the perspective of a processor that uses a commodity input to produce both a commodity output and biomass. We characterize the economic value of biomass commercializa- tion and examine how input and output spot price uncertainties affect this value. Using a model calibration, we find that lower input spot price variability or higher output spot price variabil- ity or correlation between the two spot prices increases this value for a typical palm oil mill. …


Obstacles To Accessing Pro-Poor Microcredit Programs In China: Evidence From Penggan Village, Guizhou, Deborah Shu Yi Tan, Track Tze Tuan Tan, Shao Tong Ling, John A. Donaldson Oct 2019

Obstacles To Accessing Pro-Poor Microcredit Programs In China: Evidence From Penggan Village, Guizhou, Deborah Shu Yi Tan, Track Tze Tuan Tan, Shao Tong Ling, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Why do poor farmers not take up microcredit loans, even when the terms are designed to be pro-poor? Fieldwork in a village in China’s Guizhou province revealed a puzzle: although the county government had designed a loan program that was intended to be unusually pro-poor, only three of the 349 eligible households had successfully applied. This article analyzes three potential hypotheses: farmer failure (risk aversion or financial illiteracy), market failure (lack of viable or stable market opportunities), and institutional failure (structural or institutional barriers precluding taking up loans). Based on evidence from intensive interviews, we reject the first hypothesis, and …


Wti Crude Oil Option Implied Var And Cvar: An Empirical Application, Giovanni Barone-Adesi, Marinela Adriana Finta, Chiara Legnazzi, Carlo Sala Sep 2019

Wti Crude Oil Option Implied Var And Cvar: An Empirical Application, Giovanni Barone-Adesi, Marinela Adriana Finta, Chiara Legnazzi, Carlo Sala

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using option market data we derive naturally forward-looking, non-parametric and model-free risk estimates, three desired characteristics hardly obtainable using historical returns. The option-implied measures are only based on the first derivative of the option price with respect to the strike price, bypassing the difficult task of estimating the tail of the return distribution. We estimate and backtest the 1%, 2.5%, and 5% WTI crude oil futures option-implied value at risk and conditional value at risk for the turbulent years 2011–2016 and for both tails of the distribution. Compared with risk estimations based on the filtered historical simulation methodology, our results …


Crop Planning In Sustainable Agriculture: Dynamic Farmland Allocation In The Presence Of Crop Rotation Benefits, Onur Boyabatli, Javad Nasiry, Yangfang (Helen) Zhou May 2019

Crop Planning In Sustainable Agriculture: Dynamic Farmland Allocation In The Presence Of Crop Rotation Benefits, Onur Boyabatli, Javad Nasiry, Yangfang (Helen) Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines crop planning decision in sustainable agriculture---that is, how to allocate farmland among multiple crops in each growing season when the crops have rotation benefits across growing seasons. We consider a farmer who periodically allocates the farmland between two crops in the presence of revenue uncertainty where revenue is stochastically larger and farming cost is lower when a crop is grown on rotated farmland (where the other crop was grown in the previous season). We characterize the optimal dynamic farmland allocation policy and perform sensitivity analysis to investigate how revenue uncertainty of each crop affects the farmer's optimal …


Building The Green Movement, Singapore Management University Apr 2019

Building The Green Movement, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Changing hearts and minds on plastics is key to a green future. Businesses can take the lead


How Does Energy Matter? Rural Electrification, Entrepreneurship, And Community Development In Kenya, Antoine Vernet, Jane N. O. Khayesi, Vivian George, Gerard George, Abubakar S. Bahaj Mar 2019

How Does Energy Matter? Rural Electrification, Entrepreneurship, And Community Development In Kenya, Antoine Vernet, Jane N. O. Khayesi, Vivian George, Gerard George, Abubakar S. Bahaj

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine the impact of rural electrification on individuals and businesses within a community in order to test a resource-based theory of entrepreneurship. We show that access to electricity increases average households’ income and entrepreneurial activities. The impact of electricity on entrepreneurial activity has wide-ranging implications for development policy in countries where access to electricity is sparse. Results show a significant difference in entrepreneurial opportunities with respect to firm formation, with the electrified site reporting more new micro-enterprises than the control site after implementation. Electrification affects both households’ income, individuals’ perceptions of their social position, and opportunities for business development. …


Corn, Soybeans Or Fallow: Dynamic Farmland Allocation Under Uncertainty, Onur Boyabatli, Javad Nasiry, Yangfang (Helen) Zhou Mar 2019

Corn, Soybeans Or Fallow: Dynamic Farmland Allocation Under Uncertainty, Onur Boyabatli, Javad Nasiry, Yangfang (Helen) Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This chapter develops a theoretical basis for understanding the trade-offs facing a farmer for allocating his farmland among several crops over multiple growing seasons. Specifically, we focus on the farmland allocation among two cash crops (corn and soybeans) and letting the farmland lay fallow to rejuvenate the soil and increase the revenue for the crop grown on this farmland in the subsequent seasons. In each growing period, the farmer chooses the allocation in the presence of revenue uncertainty for each cash crop, and crop rotation benefits across periods, where revenue is stochastically larger and farming cost is lower when a …


The Impact Of An Electrical Mini-Grid On The Development Of A Rural Community In Kenya, Abubakr Bahaj, Luke Blunden, Christopher Kanani, Patrick James, Issac Kiva, Zoe Matthews, Heather Price, Hildah Essendi, Jane Ealkingham, Gerard George Feb 2019

The Impact Of An Electrical Mini-Grid On The Development Of A Rural Community In Kenya, Abubakr Bahaj, Luke Blunden, Christopher Kanani, Patrick James, Issac Kiva, Zoe Matthews, Heather Price, Hildah Essendi, Jane Ealkingham, Gerard George

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Electrical mini-grids can provide electrification to rural communities far from the national network. However the benefits of such schemes are disputed. We observed changes in two matched trading-centres in Makueni County, Kenya, neither of which were initially electrified. During the study a solar photovoltaic mini-grid scheme (13.5 kWp) was constructed in one of the trading-centres. After electrification there were relative increases in the number of businesses and business income. Comparing the households in the areas around the trading centres, perceived wealth increased more around the electrified trading centre. Qualitative interviews indicated improvements in service provision by the local school and …


Volatility Spillovers Among Oil And Stock Markets In The Us And Saudi Arabia, Marinela Adriana Finta, Bart Frijns, Alireza Tourani-Rad Jan 2019

Volatility Spillovers Among Oil And Stock Markets In The Us And Saudi Arabia, Marinela Adriana Finta, Bart Frijns, Alireza Tourani-Rad

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this article, we use high frequency data and an identification via changes in volatility approach to assess the volatility spillovers among oil and the US and Saudi Arabian stock markets. We document the existence of asymmetry in contemporaneous spillover effects. Particularly, during the times when oil’s trading hours overlap with the US and Saudi Arabian stock markets, the volatility spillover from oil to the stock markets is higher than the other way around. We highlight the importance of taking into consideration the information present during continuous trading hours of oil, especially during simultaneous trading hours with the stock markets. …


Commodity Return Predictability: Evidence From Implied Variance, Skewness And Their Risk Premia, Marinela Adriana Finta, Jose Renato Haas Ornelas Dec 2018

Commodity Return Predictability: Evidence From Implied Variance, Skewness And Their Risk Premia, Marinela Adriana Finta, Jose Renato Haas Ornelas

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper investigates the role of realized and implied and their risk premia (variance and skewness) for commodities’ future returns. We estimate these moments from high frequency and commodity futures option data that results in forward-looking measures. Risk premia are computed as the difference between implied and realized moments. We highlight, from a cross-sectional and time series perspective, the strong positive relation between commodity returns and implied skewness. Moreover, we emphasize the high performance of skewness risk premium. Additionally, we show that their portfolios exhibit the best risk-return tradeoff. Most of our results are robust to other factors such as …


Capacity Management In Agricultural Commodity Processing And Application In The Palm Industry, Onur Boyabatli, Jason Quang Dang Nguyen, Tong Wang Dec 2017

Capacity Management In Agricultural Commodity Processing And Application In The Palm Industry, Onur Boyabatli, Jason Quang Dang Nguyen, Tong Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines the capacity investment decisions of a processor that uses a commodity input to produce both a commodity output and a byproduct in the context of agricultural industries. We employ a multi-period model to study the optimal one-time processing and (output) storage capacity investment decisions---in addition to the periodic processing and inventory decisions---when both input and output spot prices as well as production yield are uncertain. We characterize the optimal decisions and perform sensitivity analysis to investigate how spot price uncertainty affects the processor's optimal capacity and profitability. Using a calibration based on the palm industry, we study …


Farmers' Cooperatives In China: A Typology Of Fraud And Failure, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson Jul 2017

Farmers' Cooperatives In China: A Typology Of Fraud And Failure, Zhanping Hu, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Since the 1990s, agricultural cooperatives—particularly what China calls Farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives—have experienced rapid expansion in China. After more than two decades of growth and policy support, what is the overall performance of the ever-increasing numbers of these cooperatives? We visited 50 cooperatives across the country, most of which had officially been lauded as successful, to make a first-hand evaluation of their overall status and performance. We argue that, judging by either international or Chinese standards, the vast majority of these agricultural cooperatives are not authentic and fail to deliver expected benefits to smallholders. We categorize them into five types: genuine …


Betting On The Big: State-Brokered Land Transfers, Large-Scale Agricultural Producers, And Rural Policy Implementation, Weigang Gong, Qian Forrest Zhang Jan 2017

Betting On The Big: State-Brokered Land Transfers, Large-Scale Agricultural Producers, And Rural Policy Implementation, Weigang Gong, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

As rural governments have become hollowed out and detached from rural society, can they still effectively implement policies that lack popular support? This article examines a county in Hunan Province, where local governments had strong incentives to implement a national policy of increasing double cropping in rice farming. Small farmers rejected double cropping as unprofitable. Local governments’ limited capacity prevented them from either reshaping small farmers’ economic calculus or coercing compliance. They strategically selected a policy tool acceptable to most small farmers (paid land transfers) and gave new private large-scale producers incentives to double crop by providing subsidies and access …


Product Safety Failure And Restoring Reputation Across Markets: Fonterra's Management Of The 2013 Bacterial Contamination Crisis, Augustine Pang Jan 2017

Product Safety Failure And Restoring Reputation Across Markets: Fonterra's Management Of The 2013 Bacterial Contamination Crisis, Augustine Pang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Modern distribution systems often stretch beyond national borders such that a highly-visible product failure in a single country may negatively influence the reputation and market share of all identifiable supply chain members-even those that are blameless-in multiple countries, especially when the product is related to food safety. This study considers how Fonterra's response to its 2013 bacterial contamination crisis influenced its own reputation and that of the New Zealand dairy milk industry. It first traces how the crisis started in March 2013 and how it ended in August when investigations showed that the bacteria found did not cause botulism, a …