Ownership versus management : the role of farming networks in Argentina

Senesi, Sebastián Ignacio. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Programa de Agronegocios (PAA). Buenos Aires, Argentina.Daziano, Marcos F. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Programa de Agronegocios (PAA). Buenos Aires, Argentina.Chaddad, Fabio R. University of Missouri and INSPER. Columbia, USA.Palau, Hernán. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomía. Programa de Agronegocios (PAA). Buenos Aires, Argentina.279-289Agroholdings are ‘horizontally and vertically integrated agricultural and agribusiness enterprises, which often have an explicit holding structure consisting on quite a number of legal entities’. This might be true in the countries the authors evaluated, but it certainly is not the case in Argentina, where horizontal and vertical coordination (rather than integration) is the norm. During the last 25 years the institutional environment impacted the way farming is organized in Argentina, mainly by using contracts between different players and service providers. The agricultural production sector increasingly shifted from a low to medium and to a large - scale business model, and production units expanded horizontally by means of land leases (coordination) and purchases (integration) in order to increase the scale of production and dilute fixed costs in an attempt to generate higher margins. In that sense this paper arises four questions: (1) why is it that in Argentina large - scale farming is predominantly done via contracts instead of vertical and horizontal integration?; (2) why have large - scale farming networks recently stalled or even declined in terms of area growth?; (3) how and why do these networks vary their scale of production, locations and strategies?; and (4) what can we expect in terms of evolution of different types of large - scale farming? It is observed that in Argentina there were different institutional contexts, sometimes with clearer and more stable conditions and low levels of uncertainty, sometimes with higher intervention policies and transaction costs. The paper discusses how new organizations emerged during different periods and scenarios, in a context of increased international demand for agricultural commodities. The most relevant conclusions drawn from this analysis are that, in Argentina’s agriculture, there is a continuous shift from ownership to management, although consolidation towards larger scale entities has slowed down due to the existence of institutional and policy restrictions

Transaction attributes and adoption of hybrid governance in the Brazilian cattle market.

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Complementarity in the adoption of traceability of beef cattle in Brazil.

Complementarity is an interesting approach to explain technology adoption. Taking account the other activities the farm performs in its production strategy can help understanding the decision on the adoption of new agricultural technology. This paper aims to evidence the existence of synergic effect resulting from the joint adoption of feedlot and traceability certification of beef cattle in Brazil. A sample of 84 beef cattle farms provided data to test hypotheses by using an OLS regression model. A measure of performance ? revenue ? is regressed on variables representing both isolated and joint adoption of capital-intensive production system and traceability. The results suggest the existence of synergic effect when joint adoption takes place. Joint adoption is influenced by a set of management practices, such as forward contracts, training of employees and zootechnical performance control, which are shared by both capital-intensive production systems and traceability