MANAGEMENT AND INFORMATION AT U.S. AGRIBUSINESSES: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE CATTLE-BEEF SECTOR

Agribusinesses in the cattle-beef sector use information from both external sources and proprietary sources in the management decision making process. This research reports the results of personal interviews with employees at all levels of the beef market channel, covering the information resources that they value and the priority their firms place on information. Respondents used data on prices and cattle inventories collected by the public sector, data on retail grocery sales made available through private firms, and data and analysis from trade associations. Companies involved in meat packing and retail distribution use information technologies to automate delivery and billing for products and they are investing in improved systems. A barrier to a more efficient supply chain in beef is the incomplete implementation of retail scanner systems for fresh meat.Livestock Production/Industries,

The electronification of transit fare payments: Examining the case for partnership the case for partnerships between payments firms and transit agencies

Several of the nation’s largest payment-card-issuing banks are working with public transit agencies to enable consumers to pay fares by using payment cards, and more such partnerships may be on the horizon. On April 23, 2009, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia hosted a workshop to discuss the potential adoption of electronic payments by transit agencies from the perspectives of several subject matter experts from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. James Lock, vice president and senior advisor, Treasury Services Global Advisory Solutions group; Jameson Troutman, strategy manager with Chase Card Services; and Krista Gallagher, from Chase’s retail banking team, attended the workshop. This paper looks at several electronic transit-fare payment models and the potential opportunities these models present to transit agencies and payments firms — such as the opportunity for transit agencies to reduce costs and to operate a more efficient payments infrastructure or the opportunity for the payments industry to increase consumers’ use of contactless payment technology. This paper also identifies significant obstacles to widespread adoption of systems that allow consumers to use their credit, debit, or prepaid cards to pay fares directly.Local transit ; Point-of-sale-systems ; Public-private sector cooperation

Traditional Fresh Markets and the Supermarket Revolution: A Case Study on Châu Long Market

In many middle income countries throughout the world, yet particularly in Asia, public markets face pressure from the simultaneous forces of globalization, commercialization, and urbanization. One such country is Vietnam due to its rapid rates of urban growth since opening its doors to the global economy in 1986. In Hanoi, public markets face particularly intense pressure because the Hanoi People Committee’s Market Redevelopment Plan is systemically redeveloping its traditional fresh markets into commercial centers and building supermarkets and hypermarkets throughout the city. The purpose of this plan is to civilize the city and combat food safety concerns through modernizing retail outlets that distribute food (Geertman 2011) despite evidence illustrating how public markets tackle many of the complex challenges cities face (PPS, 2003). The purpose of this project is to complete a case study on Châu Long Market, a neighborhood market in Hanoi, Vietnam, that was slated for redevelopment into a commercial trading center in 2007 (Hương 2007). This study sought to understand the role Châu Long Market plays in local people’s daily lives, how local people perceive the market’s redevelopment plan and the rise of supermarkets in Hanoi, and how they envision the market to meet their needs in the future. To complete this study, 26 interviews with vendors, customers, local chefs, and local architecture professionals were conducted. Additionally, guidance was received and work was undertaken through a short-term internship at HealthBridge Vietnam, a Canadian NGO with a program that advocates for the protection of public spaces with public health goals in mind. The combination of these methods led this study to recommend that the Hanoi People’s Committee, its investors, and the local people who rely on Châu Long Market should collaborate to create an alternate plan for the future of the market that preserves and improves the space while keeping its authentic form, function, and character intact

Urban sustainability and community development: Creating healthy sustainable urban communities

Increased urbanization has also led to many challenges for urban residents. In the United States, land use and zoning, transportation and infrastructure, lack of affordable housing, and disinvestment have severely affected the quality of life of poor urban populations. Despite these challenges, opportunities do exist to make economically disadvantaged urban communities more sustainable, livable, and healthy. This working paper discusses the challenges facing urban communities and then considers the opportunities that exist to develop sustainable urban communities given our current economic climate.Community development ; Urban economics

The Development and Implementation of the Off-Premise Outlet Density Expansion Initiative within Ontario\u27s New Beer Framework: A Case Study

Background: In April 2015, the Ontario government announced the expansion of beer sales in up to 450 grocery stores, thereby substantially increasing access to alcohol. This policy was introduced despite a robust body of research demonstrating a positive relationship between increased outlet density, alcohol consumption, and consequent harm. Methods: This qualitative case study explored the role of health information, and the contexts and factors which shaped its use, in the development and implementation of Ontario’s policy to expand alcohol outlet density. Kingdon’s Streams Model (2011) guided a directed content analysis of policy-related documents (n=69) and transcripts from semi-structured interviews with a range of policy actors, including government policymakers, alcohol researchers, knowledge translation actors, and media personnel (n=11). Results: The grocery outlet expansion initiative was framed as an economic and consumer convenience initiative within policy-related documents. Moreover, many interview participants perceived that the decision to implement the expansion preceded stakeholder consultations. Thus, despite efforts to highlight concern regarding increases to outlet density, knowledge translation strategies by public health actors remained reactive and unpersuasive. Accordingly, the policy appears largely incongruent with pre-existing public health frameworks, including a Health in All Policies approach more broadly. Conclusion: Health information pertaining to outlet density appears to have had a minimal role in informing the development and implementation of Ontario’s expansion policy. The Ontario government is encouraged prioritize health considerations in future policy development to prevent potential unintended consequences to population health

Organisational restructuring, knowledge and spatial scale: the case of the US department store industry

Recent economic geography literature has underlined the role of tacit/local knowledge in embedding firms within their locales, characterised by the work on "learning regions", "territorial embeddedness", "institutional thickness" and "new industrial spaces". This paper contributes to this theoretical debate, using evidence from organisational restructuring of the U.S. department store industry to argue that, in contrast, retailers are using codified/universal knowledge, supported by tacit/local knowledge to successfully operate their retail operations across a range of spatial scales. As such, no one form of knowledge is exclusively relied upon but rather a blend of knowledges reduces costs and increases responsiveness across space

Impacts of Agrifood Market Transformation during Globalization on the Poor's Rural Nonfarm Employment: Lessons for Rural Business Development Programs

This paper presents emerging evidence pointing to the transmission to developing countries' rural spaces of the impacts of agrifood market transformation occurring at national and global levels. That transmission takes place via retail chains penetrating intermediate cities and rural towns, and urban-based food manufacturers selling products to those chains as well as to traditional shops. The paper presents and justifies three main hypotheses concerning the impacts of that penetration. (1) The direct effect is that the modern retailers and modern-sector processed products directly compete with, and present potentially major challenges to, the processed foods, farm inputs, and commercial services already being undertaken in the RNFE sector by the rural poor among others. (2) The indirect effects is that modern sector firms tend, once they have "modernized" their procurement systems, to prefer larger suppliers if available, and/or small suppliers that have the requisite levels of capital assets. This further translates to a potential labor substitution bias, in particular of unskilled labor, although it may drive skilled labor demand. (3) The production and consumption linkage effects of the above impacts on RNFE firms, laborers, and farmers, all else equal, probably implies greater demand for non-tradeable goods and services in the RNFE that correspond to the demand patterns of the upper stratum of rural consumers. Faced with the above, what can business development programs do? (1) Given the change in the market context, it will be increasingly undesirable and "un-strategic," except in the most remote, hinterland areas, to maintain the separation between competitiveness and nonfarm employment programs. At least for RNF activities that supply processed products, farm inputs, and retail commerce, RNF enterprises will need to face the same general challenge that exporters in their country face on the global market, and urban firms face, which is to compete on cost and quality. (2) Second, maintaining the analogy to international competitiveness, it will be necessary go beyond a generic competitiveness approach, to employ a "customized competitiveness" strategy (a term used by Reardon and Flores 2006 for export programs, but applicable here). Such an approach focuses on understanding the specific requirements of transformed markets and building the capacity of particular groups to respond to those requirements (as suppliers) or match cost and quality and compete for specific niches. The capital assets that programs should building include market intelligence capital, organizational capital, technology capital, and financial (and risk reduction) capital. (3) In the economic transformation, this time in the rural space, the poorest, those with least assets, are again vulnerable. Special attention should be paid to equipping those households and firms to participate in the increasingly challenging rural nonfarm economy.Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Impacts of Agrifood Market Transformation during Globalization on the Poor's Rural Nonfarm Employment: Lessons for Rural Business Development Programs

Consumer/Household Economics, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,