Available online at www.centmapress.org, Authors address the production of proteins from insects as the next big challenge for Western countries. Results from a sampling of millennials suggested that acceptance is "far to be obtained, although the most powerful driver to insect consumption can be the invisibility of the insect shape."
12 pages, According to the World Health Organization a diet high in vegetables may reduce the risk of coronary heart diseases, stroke, and certain types of cancer. In addition, vegetables have lower carbon footprints than most other foods. The main objective in this paper is to find drivers behind vegetable consumption, with emphasis on health and environmental motivation. We used the theory of planned behavior together with direct acyclic graphs as a theoretical basis. The empirical analysis applied the graded response model and bounded beta regression with survey data from 2019. The main results show that health attitude is a stronger motivator for vegetable consumption than environmental attitudes.
20 pages, The main goal of this article is to assess the conditions under which market-oriented and formally organised organic farming might become a factor for local development. The main question is: to what degree is the impact of this factor (organic farming) due to local policies and the quality of local governance? Based on research carried out in 2013 and in 2016 in various parts of Poland, the authors demonstrate when and under what conditions and circumstances organic farming may improve farmers’ social and economic conditions as well as the overall development of areas with a significant organic agricultural sector (proportionally to the local scale). The preliminary findings underline that local authorities in rural areas are an institution that can significantly contribute to the maintenance and development of organic farming in Poland.
10 pages, Low agricultural productivity remains one of the main factors influencing poverty and food insecurity among smallholder farmers in many developing countries. Among the key interventions assumed to influence agricultural productivity of smallholders is the provision of agricultural extension services to farmers. Access to agricultural extension however remains low in most developing countries thus slowing down agricultural productivity growth. This study therefore sought to determine the labor productivity effects of agricultural extension in northern Ghana using data from a cross-section of 300 smallholder farm households. The results of a binary probit model indicated that participation in agricultural extension increased with farming experience, farm size, access to irrigation and group membership but decreased with years of formal education and household size. Regression estimates of a labor productivity model revealed a positive and statistically significant relationship between agricultural extension and labor productivity. Also, labor productivity increased with farming experience, household income, access to irrigation, degree of specialization in production and the level of conventional inputs used per man-day of labor but decreased with participation in off-farm work. The authors recommend an increase in agricultural extension coverage to ensure that more farmers are reached with information on modern technologies to enhance their labor productivity. Furthermore, farmers need access to inputs such as seed and fertilizer to improve the productivity of labor.
Available online at www.centmapress.org, Findings of a word association task revealed that most participants associated cows, rural areas, and traditional production systems with the cue dairy farms. While purchasing their products, they paid the most attention to attributes such as health and hygiene, indicating that they pay the most attention to product quality and not production quality. Yet more than half indicated that modern production systems contradict their norms and values. Authors concluded that the current modernization efforts in Colombia do not fit to the specific culture of the country.
