Business Commons^™

The Pandemic Is Ending, But Its Boost To The Online Farmer’S Market Will Last, Min Ji Koo

Capstones

The pandemic has boosted organic and local food sales with attention to healthy lifestyles. Now, the pandemic is close to the end but its boost to the organic and local food movement will be long-lasting, especially in one retail channel: the online farmer’s market. Here is the full story: https://www.mj-koo.com/online-farmers-market

Sustainable Management Of Groundwater In Louisiana, Dependra Bhatta

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The common property nature of the Mississippi River Alluvial Aquifer (MRAA) results in the formation of a cone of depression in the southern portion of the aquifer encompassing Concordia parish, Louisiana. Excessive groundwater withdrawal and the resulting cone of depression formation have caused some wells to go dry and others to be affected by saltwater intrusion. The depleting groundwater stock can be managed optimally using different groundwater management policies. The findings of this dissertation are relevant to both policymakers and researchers to understand the effects of policies to keep the aquifer sustainable.

My dissertation is written in a three-essay format. …

Increasing Groundwater Recharge Activity In The San Joaquin Valley Of California, Jacob Willhite, Jacob Willhite

Agricultural Education and Communication

Over the past several decades, groundwater has become a primary source of water used for agriculture in California. Surface water available for agricultural use has depleted due to declining rain totals and reallocation to environmental purposes. As a result, groundwater overdraft has become a severe challenge, especially in the San Joaquin Valley of California. This excessive overdraft causes a plethora of issues, one of the most serious being land subsidence (Faunt, Sneed, Traum, & Brandt, 2016). Studies suggest some areas of the San Joaquin Valley have experienced more than a 28-foot drop in the land level since the 1970’s (Alley …

Essays On Agricultural Commodity Processing, Bin Li

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation investigates two important issues in agricultural commodity processing: (i) biomass commercialization; that is, converting organic waste into a saleable product, from economic and environmental perspectives, and (ii) optimal procurement portfolio design using multiple suppliers and spot market, and the impact of by-product introduction on this optimal portfolio.

The first chapter examines the economic implications of biomass commercialization from the perspective of an agri-processor that uses a commodity input to produce both a commodity output and biomass. We characterize the value of biomass commercialization and perform sensitivity analysis to investigate how spot price uncertainty (input and output spot price …

Too Good To Eat? Cosmetic Standards And Waste In Agricultural Supply Chain, Jiahui Xu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

There is a significant amount of food wasted at the farm level due to high cosmetic standards adopted by retailers. We examine the economic incentives for retailers to adopt such high cosmetic standards and their impact on food loss. We build a sequential game between a retailer and a farmer, where the retailer signs a contract with the farmer specifying both the wholesale price and cosmetic quality standard. By adopting high cosmetic standards, retailers can motivate farmers to exert a higher effort to improve the cosmetic quality, e.g., using better seeds and applying more pesticides. As for the drivers of …

A Case For The Congo: How Can Education And Agriculture Lead To Economic Development?, Arthur Kilongo

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Since its independence from Belgium in 1960 until this point in time, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has more than often experienced violence and political instability that have prevented the creation of a stable economy and functional political system. As a result, quality education and high paying jobs are scarce in the DR Congo today, resulting in poverty to the extent where many people in the country live on less than $1.90 per day. According to the International Labour Organization, as many as 68.7% of Congolese worked in agriculture in 2019. This paper investigates how education and training can …