Search results

The interactive relationships of farmers with institutions and other individuals create the context of succession intention – “farm embeddedness”. This context shapes in long-term self-efficacy of farmers. The main goal of this paper is to study the contextual drivers of the choice of succession paths in small-scale farms which dominate in Eastern European countries. The studied pathways, ordered by farmers’ self-efficacy are “no succession”, “conditional succession”, “unconditional internalised succession” and “unconditional externalised succession”.

We used a sample of 1,683 small farms from three Eastern European emerging markets: Romania, Moldova and Serbia. The likelihood of choosing a given succession path is analysed using a multinomial logit model; contextual drivers of succession are selected based on the theory of embeddedness.

We found that more-educated and more-efficient small-scale farmers are less likely to pass on their farms because of a kind of “glass ceiling”, so they do not want such a difficult future for their children. The most important determinant of unconditional/internalised succession is the successor formation through “training on the farm”. Some formal institutions operating in the agricultural sector hinder self-efficacy and thus unconditional succession.

Most of the papers lack a theoretical background while demonstrating that economic drivers are crucial to succession. The embeddedness theory argues that economic activities are always anchored in a social structure. We contribute to this theory by showing that the embeddedness in social networks is more important than economic factors when smallholders transfer their farms to successors in post-socialist countries. In addition, we attempt to identify which particular types of social networks are most relevant to the multi-stage process of farm transfer, and we outline several transfer scenarios using the concept of self-efficacy.

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the available literature on applications of the rough set theory. Concepts of the rough set theory are discussed for approximation, dependence and reduction of attributes, decision tables and decision rules. The applications of rough sets are discussed in pattern recognition, information processing, business and finance, industry, environment engineering, medical diagnosis and medical data analysis, system fault diagnosis and monitoring and intelligent control systems. Development trends and future efforts are outlined. An extensive list of references is also provided to encourage interested readers to pursue further investigations.

Polish agriculture is one of the main sectors of the national economy that, under the influence of political transformations and European integration, is subject to measures stimulating its development. The instruments of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) have been an important supporting stimulus.

This chapter aims to evaluate the significance of the common agricultural policy to the growth and development of agriculture and to structural transformations therein triggered primarily by the influx of additional CAP funds.

The agricultural sector was examined together with its selected characteristics in the context of CAP instruments' impact after 2004. Data included the streams of funding for Polish agriculture and indicators illustrating changes in structural features, economic performance and productivity of production factors. The indicators included changes in the number, structure and potential of farmsteads, changes in the level of employment in agriculture, this sector's share in total gross value added, profitability of farmsteads, capital expenditure level and changes in labour and land profitability compared with changes in the level of employment and agricultural production intensity. They were calculated based on data from EUROSTAT, Statistics Poland and Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN).

The outcomes confirm that common agricultural policy has contributed to create development processes in Polish agriculture. Changes in the sector affected structural characteristics, production factors productivity and the income of agricultural producers. Since Poland joined the European Union (EU), the percentage of agricultural workers declined by 8.4 p.p. and the number of farms decreased by nearly 30%. These changes were accompanied by a nearly twofold increase in agricultural labour productivity, 50% increase in land productivity and the profitability of land increased by 43%.

Public acts of self-criticism in Eastern Europe – a genre cultivated and extorted by the communist parties – did not disappear with the end of communism. In the young democracies of the region self-criticism has become an attempt to diagnose society’s ‘backward’ character and to develop ‘self-correction’ scenarios in order to participate in the Western modernising discourse. On the one hand, conservative and right-wing elites suppose that public acts of self-criticism (performed by politicians, artists or scholars) can endow the vetting procedures of the ancien régime with a sense of social catharsis and retroactive justice. On the other hand, liberal and left-wing intellectuals subject themselves to collective self-reckoning, not only with their choices made in the transition period, but also with the memory of WWII, in order to shape a civil society free of anti-Semitism and intolerance. An analysis based on the discourse-historical approach in critical discourse analysis, Reinhart Koselleck’s historical semantics and Michel Foucault’s notion of discourse, and carried out on the text corpus of selected acts of self-criticism in Poland, aims to diagnose the role these acts had in shaping public discourse on the troublesome past.

A concept and an implementation of the multimedia computer system for the monitoring of environmental noise is presented in the paper. The system provides an extension to the Internet‐based system for testing hearing which was engineered and launched in 1999. A considerable portion of hearing diseases is caused by excessive industry, urban and traffic noise or any unwanted sounds occurring in everyday life. Consequently, it is expected that a reduction of hearing diseases occurrence will be achieved as a result of implementation of the solutions that have been developed within the project scope. The latest technological advances in information technology were used in the course of the project realisation. Consequently, it is shown in the paper that the presented solutions are based on some innovative ideas and inexpensive technical means for measuring noise and vibration allowing fast evaluation of its influence on the psychosomatic and the vegetative system. It is expected that implementation of the noise telemonitoring system covering whole country will contribute to rising awareness of society and authorities with regard of the influence of noise on health. Furthermore, it turns out to be an essential factor in the future improvement of the environmental noise conditions.

While the use of long-endurance remotely piloted aircraft systems (LE-RPAS) is frequently associated with military operations, their core capabilities of long-range, low-cost and high-quality optics and communications systems have considerable potential benefit in supporting the work of humanitarian logisticians. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to demonstrate how LE-RPAS could be used to improve the logistic response to a rapid onset disaster.

Using the response to the Cyclone Pam that struck Vanuatu in March 2015 as an example, this paper provides an overview of how LE-RPAS could be used to support the post-disaster needs assessment and subsequent response processes. In addition, it provides a high-level route map to develop the people, process and technology requirements that would support the operational deployment of the LE-RPAS capabilities.

On the basis of the analysis of the published literature and the resultant assessment of the benefits of LE-RPAS to support humanitarian logistic (HL) operations, it is concluded that a formal “proof of concept” trial should be undertaken, and the results be made available to the humanitarian community.

This paper is conceptual in nature, but has been developed through an analysis of the literature relating to remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) and HLs. A route map through which the paper’s conclusions can be validated is also offered.

LE-RPAS have great potential to provide a swifter understanding of the impact of a disaster, particularly those where the location is remote from the main centres of population. This would allow the affected country’s National Disaster Management Organisation, together with those of supporting countries, to react more efficiently and effectively. In particular, it would allow a swifter transition from a “guess-based” push approach to one that more accurately reflects the disaster’s impact – i.e. a pull-based logistic response.

Given the military genesis of RPAS, it will be important to ensure that those engaged in their operation are sensitive to the implications of this. In particular, it will be essential to ensure that any humanitarian operations involving RPAS are undertaken in an ethical way that respects, for example, the privacy and safety of the affected population.

While there is some emerging discussion on the humanitarian-related use of RPAS in the literature, this generally reflects the operation of small aircraft with limited range and payload capabilities. Useful though such RPAS unquestionably are, this paper expands the discussion of how such systems can support the humanitarian logistician by considering the benefits and challenges of operating long-endurance aircraft.

Biomimicry is an interdisciplinary approach inspired by the living beings in nature while searching for solutions to solve mankind’s problems. This new approach emerging in the late 1990s has been quite innovative while dealing with basic problem solving processes in a business environment. Biomimicry is a creative solution for such processes as design, transformation, organization and sustainability in business enterprises. The objective of this work is to offer model samples that build a bridge between the nature and business organizations. The principles in nature offer many strategies for a sustainable business performance and thus help us maintain optimization and effectiveness in business management through cooperation.

In recent years, rough set theory has evolved as one of the most promising classification techniques. One of the cardinal uses of rough set theory is its application for rule generation. The purpose of this paper is to propose a real-time fabric inspection technique. This work deals with the multi-class classification of fabric defects using rough set theory.

This technique focuses on the classification of fabric defects using the effective decision rules envisaged by rough set theory. In the proposed work, the six features of 50 images have been used for multiclass classification of fabric defects.

In this work, 40 images were used for generation of decision rules and 10 unseen images were used for validation out of which nine images are accurately predicted by the proposed technique.

The proposed method accurately identified 9 out of 10 testing defects. The obtained decision rules provide an insight about the classification method which ensures that the prediction accuracy can be improved further by framing more robust decision rules with the help of a large training data set. Thus, with the support of modern computational systems this method is potent in getting recognition from the textile industry as a real-time classification technique.

The paper aimed to examine the determinants of agricultural commercialisation of farmers and measured its commercialisation level in the highland of Vietnam.

A sample size of 360 was randomly chosen from a total population of 5,771 farmers, and a structured questionnaire was developed to collect data. Descriptive and inferential statistics, including linear regression analysis, were used to analyse the data.

The descriptive statistics showed that the average commercialisation level of farmers was 56.3%. The regression model result indicated that number of off-farm income sources, farmer's risk perception, farming practices, number of agricultural activities, motorbikes value, ethnicity, distance from the city centre, number of customers, non-traded inputs value, participation in training programmes, family size, farm size, mobile phones value, traded inputs value, land tenure, distance from the local market and education of household head significantly affected agricultural commercialisation of farmers.

Any development strategies that assist farmers in adopting commercial farming in the highland of developing countries should consider these determinants.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-03-2022-0161

The purpose of this paper is to investigate borrowing motivation, credit access barriers and their impacts on income of smallholder farmers engaging in cinnamon value chain development in Northwestern Vietnam.

A multistage sampling technique using a structural questionnaire and in-depth interviews was applied for collecting primary data from farmers and relevant stakeholders. The Propensity Score Matching was employed to analyze access barriers and examine whether relaxing these barriers can improve farmer income. To deal with the issue of model uncertainty and further increase the robustness of results, Bayesian model average and the bootstrapping approach were applied.

To fulfill the certain quality standards of cinnamon products which are later used in the medicinal and food industry, farmers as primary producers need credit for intensive investment to increase the value of their products. Still, there are 25.36 percent of farmers who have access constraints to formal credit. In the credit received group, 24.56 percent have not received full credit as demanded. Access problems are relevant to lack of collateral, lack of bank account holdings, inconvenient access to roads, weak chain linkage and limited organic farming. Removing credit access barriers can improve the income for farmers from cinnamon farming activities.

More detailed information on the conditions under which credit serves a more important role in creating value addition for cinnamon products can help the government establish more effective credit policies.

Great attention should be paid to smallholder farmers as primary producers in the chain for sustainable value chain development in developing and emerging economies. Policy interventions should facilitate access to bank accounts, speed up the process of granting residential land use certificates, certify organic farming and upgrade the road system. Strengthening the chain linkage can enhance smallholder farmers’ capacity to obtain credit through value chain lending development.

Empirical studies on agricultural credit from the perspective of value chain development remain scarce. A better understanding of credit access constraints allows for the positing of recommendations for policy makers to facilitate value chain lending and a medicinal plant-based agro-forestry system in similar situations.