abstract: Consumers can purchase local food through intermediated marketing channels, such as grocery stores, or through direct-to-consumer marketing channels, for instance, farmers markets. While the number of farms that utilize direct-to-consumer outlets keeps increasing, the direct-to-consumer sales remain lower than intermediated sales. If consumers prefer to purchase local food through intermediated channels, then policies designed to support direct channels may be misguided. Using a variety of experiments, this dissertation investigates consumer preferences for local food and their demand differentiated by marketing channel. In the first essay, I examine the existing literature on consumer preferences for local food by applying meta-regression analysis to a set of eligible research papers. My analysis provides evidence of statistically significant willingness to pay for local food products. Moreover, I find that a methodological approach and study-specific characteristics have a significant influence on the reported estimates for local attribute. By separating the demand for local from the demand for a particular channel, the second essay attempts to disentangle consumers’ preferences for marketing channels and the local-attribute in their food purchases. Using an online choice experiment, I find that consumers are willing to pay a premium for local food. However, they are not willing to pay premiums for local food that is sold at farmers markets relative to supermarkets. Therefore, in the third essay I seek to explain the rise in intermediated local by investigating local food shopping behavior. I develop a model of channel-selection in a nested context and apply it to the primary data gathered through an online food diary. I find that, while some consumers enjoy shopping at farmers markets to meet their objectives, such as socialization with farmers, the majority of consumers buy local food from supermarkets because they offer convenient settings where a variety of products can be bought as one basket. My overall results suggest that, if the goal is to increase the sales of local food, regardless of the channel, then existing supply-chain relationships in the local food channel appear to be performing well. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Agribusiness 2018

abstract: It is well understood that innovation drives productivity growth in agriculture. Innovation, however, is a process that involves activities distributed throughout the supply chain. In this dissertation I investigate three topics that are at the core of the distribution and diffusion of innovation: optimal licensing of university-based inventions, new variety adoption among farmers, and consumers’ choice of new products within a social network environment. University researchers assume an important role in innovation, particularly as a result of the Bayh-Dole Act, which allowed universities to license inventions funded by federal research dollars, to private industry. Aligning the incentives to innovate at the university level with the incentives to adopt downstream, I show that non-exclusive licensing is preferred under both fixed fee and royalty licensing. Finding support for non-exclusive licensing is important as it provides evidence that the concept underlying the Bayh-Dole Act has economic merit, namely that the goals of university-based researchers are consistent with those of society, and taxpayers, in general. After licensing, new products enter the diffusion process. Using a case study of small holders in Mozambique, I observe substantial geographic clustering of new-variety adoption decisions. Controlling for the other potential factors, I find that information diffusion through space is largely responsible for variation in adoption. As predicted by a social learning model, spatial effects are not based on geographic distance, but rather on neighbor-relationships that follow from information exchange. My findings are consistent with others who find information to be the primary barrier to adoption, and means that adoption can be accelerated by improving information exchange among farmers. Ultimately, innovation is only useful when adopted by end consumers. Consumers’ choices of new products are determined by many factors such as personal preferences, the attributes of the products, and more importantly, peer recommendations. My experimental data shows that peers are indeed important, but “weak ties” or information from friends-of-friends is more important than close friends. Further, others regarded as experts in the subject matter exert the strongest influence on peer choices. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Business Administration 2015

This study focuses on the Brazilian family agriculture and the changes in the field at the beginning of this century, and aims at analyzing the recent changes in the field and implications for family agriculture. The choice of this approach was to start living the author with farmers and their theoretical conception about the contradictions in the countryside. This is an MSc in Social Work, submitted to the Graduate Program in Social Work at the Federal University of Alagoas. The study took place from August 2007 to February 2010, based on a critical perspective. This research started from the assumption that the changes in family agriculture in the early twentyfirst century, have shown a deepening of its subordination to capital, shaped the development of the destructive forces of capital over the field, considering that by incorporating the balance of household production, big capital keeps increasing its process of expansion and accumulation, while expanding its dominance over the field. Based on this study, we have seen in Brazil since the Portuguese colonization, consisted of a hegemonic agro-export model, focusing on large estates in monoculture and in slavery, characterized as 'a specific type of capitalism' in which 'small producers rural', historically, played a secondary role to the dominant agricultural model. However, since the end of the twentieth century, the Brazilian government, under the determination of big business, has justified the implementation of various measures to adjust the called family agriculture by the need for their development, strengthening and expansion. However, such measures actually show the deepening of the process of subordination of rural producers to the determinations of capital should be included as part of the neo-liberal offensive against the constant conflicts in the countryside and the ever increasing need for expansion and capital accumulation. / O presente estudo trata sobre a agricultura familiar brasileira e as transformações no campo, nesse início de século, e tem por objetivo geral analisar as recentes transformações no campo e suas implicações na produção agrícola familiar. A escolha dessa abordagem se deu a partir do convívio do autor com produtores rurais e da sua concepção teórica acerca das contradições presentes no meio rural. Trata-se de uma dissertação de Mestrado em Serviço Social, apresentada ao Programa de Pós-Graduação em Serviço Social da Universidade Federal de Alagoas, cujo estudo se deu no período de agosto de 2007 a fevereiro de 2010, tendo como base uma perspectiva crítica. Tal pesquisa partiu da hipótese de que as transformações na agricultura familiar, no início do século XXI, têm evidenciado o aprofundamento da sua subordinação ao capital, plasmado no desenvolvimento das forças destrutivas do capital sobre o campo, tendo em vista que ao incorporar o excedente da produção familiar, o grande capital mantém crescente o seu processo de expansão e acumulação, enquanto amplia o seu domínio sobre o campo. Com base nesse estudo, vimos que, no Brasil, desde a colonização portuguesa, constituiu-se um modelo hegemonicamente agroexportador, centrado no latifúndio, na monocultura e no escravismo, caracterizado como um tipo específico de capitalismo , no qual os pequenos produtores rurais , historicamente, ocuparam um papel secundário ao modelo agrícola predominante. No entanto, desde o final do século XX, o governo brasileiro, sob determinação do grande capital, tem justificado a implementação de diversas medidas de ajustamento da chamada agricultura familiar pela necessidade de seu desenvolvimento, fortalecimento e expansão. Entretanto, tais medidas, na verdade, evidenciam o aprofundamento do processo de subordinação dos produtores rurais às determinações do capital, devendo ser compreendidas como parte da ofensiva neoliberal face aos constantes conflitos no campo e à necessidade sempre crescente de expansão e acumulação do capital.

This thesis examines how the pursuit of commercial gain affected the development of agriculture in western Oregon's Willamette, Umpqua, and Rogue River Valleys. The period of study begins when the British owned Hudson's Bay Company began to farm land in and around Fort Vancouver in 1825, and ends in 1861--during the time when agrarian settlement was beginning to expand east of the Cascade Mountains. Given that agriculture in Oregon, as elsewhere, would eventually reach a standard of national development, and given that most of Oregon's immigrants arrived poor and lacked the farm implements needed for subsistence, the question this study asks is what methods and motivations guided Oregon's first agrarian settlers to improve their industry? It is the central premise of this study that commerce was the sine qua non of agricultural development, and that commercial gain was the incentive that underpinned the improvements necessary to its progress. The question itself necessarily involves physiographical and climatological conditions, existing and potential markets, and a merchant class whose commercial motivations were beyond doubt. Two additional matters that weigh substantially through most of this paper need to be mentioned: First, because not all farmers were commercially-oriented, the focus is on individuals, including merchants, whose entrepreneurial activities contributed the most to agriculture; second, the discovery of gold in California in 1848, and in southern Oregon in the early 1850s, had a huge and lasting influence on Oregon agriculture and on the overall economy.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Agricultural Economics)) --University of Limpopo, 2016. / Refer to document