4pgs, The U.S. Department of Agriculture has reinforced oversight on organic certification and enforcement to prevent mislabeled products, in what advocates are calling the biggest update in decades.
23 pages, The present study explores the development of agri-food value chains from an organizational learning perspective, using the German organic food sector as an example. We illustrate how the development of local value chains unfolds over time and outline how facilitation can support this process.
13 pages, The purpose of this paper is to consider role of branding agricultural products in better market valorization. The benefit of branding is especially significant for rural and insufficiently developed environment. The problems of rural environments are multidimensional, but revitalization and improvement of development leads to strengthening competitiveness of these areas. The higher price of products enables the increase of income of agricultural workers, as well as diversification of the rural economy and creation of conditions of better socioeconomic aspects in rural environments. Creation of a more desirable image of an agricultural product most often has a strong reflection on the area of origin, as well as on reformation of the social attitude towards that environment. Branded products and services have a higher market value, due to which legal aspects enabling not only branding, but maintenance of a brand as well, are of special significance.
7 pages, With the growing needs of society for food safety and quality, as well as habitat protection, soil and water quality improvement, the role of eco-innovations in agriculture can be considered to provide ecosystem services and environmental protection. The attention paid by institutions to food safety and quality encourages innovative solutions. The aim of this paper is to present the attitudes of farmers to implement eco-innovative solutions such as organic farming and agri-environmental practices. A survey was conducted among 64 organic farmers dealing with perennial crops, pastures, and beekeeping in Bulgaria. The data from the survey was used to build logistic regression to analyze the factors affecting the decisions to implement eco-innovative solutions. The results reveal that three most important factors affect willingness to adopt eco-innovations are: positive perception of the impact of eco-innovation on environment quality, positive change in income as a result of organic farming, and adequate state policy and regulation of the agricultural sector.