How private enterprise organized agricultural markets in Kenya

Does liberalization of agricultural markets and an expanded role for the private sector result in a competitive market structure in Africa? The author empirically investigates the organization and development of a dynamic African export-oriented sector - Kenya's horticultural exports - in which the private sector has long had a dominant role. The author highlights the sector's impressive pattern of growth over the past two decades and examines the characteristics of participating private firms, the competitive pattern among those firms, and the institutional means by which they procure raw materials for processing and export. He finds that despite the Kenyan government's direct investments in processing and trading activities and its application of regulations and targeted support measures to strengthen the role of Kenyan Africans in the horticultural trade, most of this trade remains controlled by foreign-owned companies or members of Kenya's small minority Asian and European communities. This paper also examines the extent and forms of competition in this sub-sector and reviews the wide range of institutional arrangements adopted by private firms to coordinate their own processing and marketing activities with the farm-level production of horticultural commodities and raw materials.Markets and Market Access,Access to Markets,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies

Private trader response to market liberalization in Tanzania's cashew nut industry

Between World War II and the early 1970s, Tanzania developed one of the world's largest cashew nut industries. In 1973-74, marketed production reached 145,000 tons (about 30 percent of world production), with cashews providing an important source of income to some 250,000 farmers and being the country's fourth largest source of foreign exchange. This trade was originally developed and organized by private traders (of Indian and Arab origin), although in the 1960s a multitiered marketing system - involving local cooperative societies, regional cooperative unions, and a marketing board - was imposed, with private traders gradually removed from the market system. Despite a buoyant international market, Tanzania's cashew nut industry underwent a steady and massive decline through the 1970s and 1980s. The author examines the factors that contribute to this downward spin: Tanzania's village program, a decline in real producer prices, and inefficiencies in cooperative and marketing board crop collection and downstream activities. With the decline in production, living standards in the main cashew-growing regions worsened, and most of the large-scale, donor-funded, government-owned processing factories became"white elephants."With the industry on the brink of collapse, in 1991 the government announced the liberalization of the cashew nut market, permitting private firms to once again buy and sell the nuts. According to the author, the reform process has been characterized by confusion, uncertainty, and latent government controls and interventions, though the industry shows some signs of recovery. Based on a recent survey, the author examines the liberalization process - including its implementation at the national and local levels, the private sector response to renewed trading opportunities, and the resultant patterns of competition, price discovery, and marketing channel formation. The liberalization experience in Tanzania's cashew nut industry offers interesting insights for other sub-Saharan African countries where uncertainty remains about the appropriate roles (if any) for marketing boards in liberalized markets, about the ability of cooperatives to compete in such markets, and about the ability of indigenous firms to take advantage of new trading opportunities. In Tanzania, neither the cooperatives nor the marketing board have fared well in the liberalized market. Although a relatively large number of private traders have recently entered into cashew buying and selling, successful entry into export marketing has proven viable only for a small number of companies. Their characteristics: medium to large in scale, diversified across commodities, involved in trading and agroindustry, not indigenous, and with strong financial and trading links abroad.Food&Beverage Industry,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Crops&Crop Management Systems,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems

Standards and agro-food exports from developing countries: rebalancing the debate

The proliferation and increased stringency of food safety and agricultural health standards is a source of concern among many developing countries. These standards are perceived as a barrier to the continued success of their exports of high-value agro-food products (including fish, horticultural, and other products), either because these countries lack the technical and administrative capacities needed for compliance or because these standards can be applied in a discriminatory or protectionist manner. The authors draw on available literature and work in progress to examine the underlying evidence related to the changing standards environment and its impact on existing and potential developing country exporters of high-value agricultural and food products. The evidence the authors present, while only partial, suggests that the picture for developing countries as a whole is not necessarily problematic and certainly less pessimistic than the mainstream"standards-as-barriers"perspective. Indeed, rising standards serve to accentuate underlying supply chain strengths and weaknesses and thus impact differently on the competitive position of individual countries and distinct market participants. Some countries and industries are even using high quality and safety standards to successfully (re-)position themselves in competitive global markets. This emphasizes the importance of considering the effects of food safety and agricultural health measures within the context of wider capacity constraints and underlying supply chain trends and drivers. The key question for developing countries is how to exploit their strengths and overcome their weaknesses such that they are gainers rather than losers in the emerging commercial and regulatory context.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Public Health Promotion,Environmental Economics&Policies,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Labor Policies,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Livestock&Animal Husbandry,Food&Beverage Industry

A Strategic Perspective on the Impact of Food Safety Standards on Developing Countries

This paper explores the competing concepts of 'standards as barriers' and standards as catalysts' in the context of food safety standards in international trade in agricultural and food products. It is suggested that food safety standards can act as both a barrier to trade and the basis of competitive positioning for developing countries in international markets. This suggests that the application of a strategic framework to analyze and assess alternative responses to evolving food safety standards can throw some light on the circumstances under which standards act to prohibit trade or, alternatively, create competitive trade opportunities. The use of such a framework is illustrated through a brief case study of fish and fishery product exports from Kenya and India.Agriculture, Food, Trade, Food Safety, Standards, Technical barriers to Trade, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Q18, K32, F13,

Linking African smallholders to high-value markets : practitioner perspectives on benefits, constraints, and interventions

This paper provides the results of an international survey of practitioners with experience in facilitating the participation of African smallholder farmers in supply chains for higher-value and/or differentiated agricultural products. It explores their perceptions about the constraints inhibiting and the impacts associated with this supply chain participation. It also examines their perceptions about the factors affecting the success of project and policy interventions in this area, about how this success is and should be measured, and about the appropriate roles for national governments, the private sector, and development assistance entities in facilitating smallholder gains in this area. The results confirm a growing'consensus'about institutional roles, yet suggest some ambiguity regarding the impacts of smallholder participation in higher-value supply chains and the appropriateness of the indicators most commonly used to gauge such impacts. The results also suggest a need to strengthen knowledge about both the'old'and'new'sets of constraints (and solutions) related to remunerative smallholder inclusion, in the form of the rising role of standards alongside more long-standing concerns about infrastructure and logistical links to markets.Access to Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Labor Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems

Chiasma

Newspaper reporting on events at the Boston University School of Medicine in the 1960s

Oncogenic Kras Activates a Hematopoietic-to-Epithelial IL-17 Signaling Axis in Preinvasive Pancreatic Neoplasia

SummaryMany human cancers are dramatically accelerated by chronic inflammation. However, the specific cellular and molecular elements mediating this effect remain largely unknown. Using a murine model of pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PanIN), we found that KrasG12D induces expression of functional IL-17 receptors on PanIN epithelial cells and also stimulates infiltration of the pancreatic stroma by IL-17-producing immune cells. Both effects are augmented by associated chronic pancreatitis, resulting in functional in vivo changes in PanIN epithelial gene expression. Forced IL-17 overexpression dramatically accelerates PanIN initiation and progression, while inhibition of IL-17 signaling using genetic or pharmacologic techniques effectively prevents PanIN formation. Together, these studies suggest that a hematopoietic-to-epithelial IL-17 signaling axis is a potent and requisite driver of PanIN formation

Angiographic Findings and Outcome in Diabetec Patients Treated With Thrombolytic Therapy for Acute Myocardial Infarction: The GUSTO-I Experience

OBJECTIVES: This study sought to determine whether diabetes mellitus, in the setting of thrombolysis for acute myocardial infarction, affects 1) early infarct-related artery patency and reocclusion rates; and 2) global and regional ventricular function indexes. We also sought to assess whether angiographic or baseline clinical variables, or both, can account for the known excess mortality after myocardial infarction in the diabetic population. BACKGROUND: Mortality after acute myocardial infarction in patients with diabetes is approximately twice that of nondiabetic patients. It is uncertain whether this difference in mortality is due to a lower rate of successful thrombolysis, increased reocclusion after successful thrombolysis, greater ventricular injury or a more adverse angiographic or clinical profile in diabetic patients. METHODS: Patency rates and global and regional left ventricular function were determined in patients enrolled in the GUSTO-I Angiographic Trial. Thirty-day mortality differences between those with and without diabetes were compared. RESULTS: The diabetic cohort had a significantly higher proportion of female and elderly patients, and th

The Role of Individual Variables, Organizational Variables and Moral Intensity Dimensions in Libyan Management Accountants’ Ethical Decision Making

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and (in Libya) Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world

Communications Biophysics

Contains reports on nine research projects split into four sections.National Institutes of Health (Grant 5 P01 NS13126)National Institutes of Health (Grant 5 K04 NS00113)National Institutes of Health (Training Grant 5 T32 NS07047)National Institutes of Health (Grant 5 ROl NS11153-03)National Institutes of Health (Fellowship 1 T32 NS07099-01)National Science Foundation (Grant BNS77-16861)National Institutes of Health (Grant 5 ROl NS10916)National Institutes of Health (Grant 5 ROl NS12846)National Science Foundation (Grant BNS77-21751)National Institutes of Health (Grant 1 RO1 NS14092)Health Sciences FundNational Institutes of Health (Grant 2 R01 NS11680)National Institutes of Health (Grant 2 RO1 NS11080)National Institutes of Health (Training Grant 5 T32 GM07301