Entrepreneurial Proclivity, Market Orientation and Performance of Dutch Farmers and Horticultural growers

Farm Management,

Investments in Energy-Saving Systems in Dutch Horticultural Farms

In the Netherlands the greenhouse sector is a major user of energy. It accounts for 7% of the total amount of energy used in the Netherlands and for 79% of the total amount of energy used in agriculture. In order to sustain this sector on the long term, it is important that its use of energy is lowered. One way of reducing energy use for horticultural producers is investing in energy-saving systems. The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the investment behavior of farm operators. A two-stage econometric model has been applied to analyze the factors influencing the decision of farmers to invest and the level of investments.investments, two-stage model, management theory, option value, adjustment costs, Farm Management,

Ondernemers en de actoren in hun omgeving in beweging: Zoektocht naar rode draden in agrarische transitieprocessen

With the aid of a theoretically-based analysis of four historical and four current change processes - or transition case studies - in agriculture, we have made a study of how farmers and their associated actors move towards a sustainable agriculture. The change processes always appear to need the same 'conditions' in order to be successful and also appear always to encounter the same types of obstacles. It may be concluded from this that better advance anticipation of obstacles' hanging above the heads' of people involved in change needs to be possible, so that the envisaged change processes can proceed more easily. It remains a fact, however, that every change process also encounters unmanageable, unpredictable obstacles.Farm Management,

How to build a successful business model with big data platforms?

A product lifecycle approach is used to describe the origin, history and development of current big data platforms, using literature sources, business case descriptions, interviews held with founding team members of platform businesses, and experiences in action research projects on big data platform development in Dutch agriculture. The paper concludes with an outlook on future developments and business models

Searching for the entrepreneurs among new entrants in European Agriculture : the role of human and social capital

It is stated that farmers need to become more entrepreneurial to compete in modern agriculture. Much of the literature on agricultural entrepreneurship, however, has been focused on established farmers and little is known about what determines this behaviour among new entrants. New entrants may provide a robust answer to the call for entrepreneurialism in agriculture. This paper examines the drivers for entrepreneurialism among 1,877 new entrants in Europe, in particular the effect of human and social capital on new business opportunity identification once they have started their farming activity. The results suggest that new part-time farmers who treat farming as their second job are less likely to identify new business opportunities. By contrast, new farmers with high levels of confidence in their entrepreneurial competencies tend to identify more new business opportunities. Farmers’ weak social ties and a positive attitude in their context towards entrepreneurship increases opportunity identification. The findings contribute to understanding the specifics of new entrants in agriculture and highlight the importance of specific entrepreneurial knowledge and professional networks for this group. This has consequences for tailoring education and training programs as well as for policy measures for this specific group

The decision to invest and the investment level: An application to Dutch glasshouse horticulture firms

Investment models typically explain only a small share of the total investment variation within or between firms. A reason for this may be that those models do not explicitly differentiate between the decision to invest and the decision about the level of investment. In this paper, a two-steps theoretical framework and estimation procedure are developed to take into account the different nature of both decisions. ‘Nearly zero’ investments are considered to be small replacement or maintenance investments and treated as ‘zero’ investments. The applied two-step Heckman model shows that the decision to invest is significantly related to available capital (-), wealth (+), debts (-), output prices (+), land price growth (+), capital price growth (-), energy price growth (+), revenues (+) and age of the firm owner (-). The level of investment is also related to available capital, wealth, debts, output price, capital price growth and age of the firm owner, but with opposite signs for debts and capital price growth. Moreover, firm size positively affects the level of investment (but not the decision to invest). The fact that both decisions are affected differently proves the rationale of using a two-step investment model but further research is needed to increase the explanatory power of the models

Investments in Energy-Saving Systems in Dutch Horticultural Farms

In the Netherlands the greenhouse sector is a major user of energy. It accounts for 7% of the total amount of energy used in the Netherlands and for 79% of the total amount of energy used in agriculture. In order to sustain this sector on the long term, it is important that its use of energy is lowered. One way of reducing energy use for horticultural producers is investing in energy-saving systems. The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the investment behavior of farm operators. A two-stage econometric model has been applied to analyze the factors influencing the decision of farmers to invest and the level of investments