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This study deals with attenuating the risk of relying on a single export market, which was heightened by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on Taiwanese atemoya (a fruit with short storage life) and the adoption of active controlled atmosphere (CA) containers, a new technology which lengthens storage time for other export markets. This study looks at the financial feasibility of the technology's first ever use in atemoya exports.

Apart from the standard financial assessment tools—like net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), benefit-cost ratio (BCR) and payback period (PBP)—this study calibrated five different scenarios based on data gathered from relevant market agents including suppliers, exporters, customs brokers and technology developer.

Due to the high profit margin and low investment cost, the use of active CA containers for long-haul exports of this highly perishable fruit is found both technically and financially feasible, despite the generally higher operational cost during the pandemic.

This study looked at three specific export markets: Malaysia, Dubai and Canada. Results here may lack generalizability in other markets, although it is believed that slight deviations would not invalidate the conclusions of this research because short, medium and long distances were all covered therein.

This paper studies the first time that active CA is used for export of atemoyas to expand existing markets.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between prudence in risk attitudes and patience of time preference of Chinese apple growers regarding off-farm cold storage of production and marketing in non-harvest seasons. The authors also consider the effect of farmer participation in cooperative-like organizations known as Farm Bases (FBs).

The authors use multiple list methods and elicitation strategies to measure Chinese apple farmers' risk attitudes and time preferences. Because these farmers can either sell their apples immediately to supermarkets or intermediaries or place them in storage, the authors assess correlations between their storage decisions and their preferences regarding risk and time. The authors also differentiate risks involving gains and losses and empirically examine individual risk attitudes in different scenarios.

Marketing decisions are moderately associated with risk attitudes but not time preference. Farmers with memberships in local farmer cooperatives are likely to speculate more in cold storage. Thus, risk aversion behavioral and psychological motives affect farmers' decision-making of cold storage and intertemporal marketing activities. However, membership in cooperatives does not always result in improved income and welfare for farmers.

The research confirms that behavioral factors may strongly drive vulnerable smallholder farmers to speculate into storage even under seasonal and uncertain marketing volatility. There is the need to think deeper about the rationale of promoting cooperatives and other agricultural forms, because imposing these without careful consideration can have negative impacts.

Do risk and time preferences affect the decision of farmers to utilize storage facilities? This question is important because it is not clear if and how risk preferences affect the tradeoff between consuming today and saving for tomorrow, especially for farmers in developing countries.