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• An Agro-Food Waste Commercial Utilisation Behaviour Lens among Urban Agro-producer Households in a Developing Economy

  Charles Karani

  Eric Gido

  Hillary Bett

  Views:

  136

  Small-urban farm businesses utilise agro-food waste emanating from own production and other levels of food supply chain activities to supplement conventional inputs. Out of these, the food produce surplus from agro-producer households is offloaded to the urban market. As such, the aim of the study was to assess the determinants of agro-food waste commercial utilisation behaviour among urban agro-producer households. An electronically-designed research tool was administered to 456 agro-producer households to collect self-reported estimates of their agro-food waste utilisation behaviour. Results indicated higher budget share towards conventional inputs (0.73) compared to agro-food waste (0.27) but the observed suboptimal production intensification could be rectified with increased use of agro-food waste. Structural equation modelling results indicated that attitude, environmental awareness and concern, motivation and perceived moral obligation had positive significant influence on commercial utilisation intention. The adopted constructs for the model could explain 79.1% of the commercial utilisation behaviour variance. Furthermore, commercial utilisation intention, risk perceptions and perceived behavioural control had significant influence on the commercial utilisation behaviour. Findings are an indicator that agro-food waste commercial utilisation intentions among small-urban farm businesses would likely transition to commercial utilisation behaviour. Since behaviour can be learnt and developed, aspects that contribute to commercial utilisation intentions and behaviour would need to be stimulated. As a strategy of reducing the collectible waste, urban authorities may introduce tailor-made programs meant to stimulate commercial utilisation intention and behaviour in small-urban farm businesses. In valuation of agro-food waste, methodologies that could factor in utility would provide more precise insights in its commercial utilisation.   

• Agrarian budget as an instrument of agrarian development policy of Serbia

  Danko Kardovic

  Views:

  110

  Purpose of the research is to emphasize the role of agrarian budget in development of Serbian agrarian economy and to examine the problem of agricultural and rural development financingsupport.Furthermore, in this research initial reforms of economic measures have been analyzed concerning Serbian agrarian policy. The goal of this paper is to provide an insight into the role of agricultural budget in agrarian policy of Serbia.The first part of the study gives an overview of macroeconomic situation in Serbia and impact of the financial crisis on Serbia’s economy. Second part includes analysis of the topic item, i.e. agrarian budget role in Serbian agrarian sector. It includes review of relevant literature and researches already conducted on legislation and practice of Serbian agrarian policy as well as examination of statistical data regarding present agrarian budget for 2009.The research focuses at the Serbian agrarian budget for 2009 and agrarian policy of the present Serbian government administration.

• Making agricultural support objective-oriented: a linear programming approach for Ukraine

  79-83

  Taras Vysotskyi

  Olena Kovtun

  Views:

  101

  The overall aim of the paper is to analyse the distribution of state agricultural support in Ukraine with the purpose of drawing up proposals on how to make it more objective-oriented. The investigation is based on the results of a case study conducted in Zdolbuniv district3, in the Rivne region of Ukraine, where interviews with local agricultural experts were held. The research is founded on the Linear Programming (LP) methodological approach, which is applied to calculate an objective-oriented agricultural budget allocation. This approach also integrates judgements from district agricultural experts. The outcomes show that agricultural support should have been redistributed in a slightly different way from the district perspective. However, the calculated changes in most cases match with the overall development directions in the Ukrainian agricultural support policy. Furthermore, the developed model has proved to be a useful and, at the same time, quite simple tool in application support, and one which could have been used by the agricultural decision-makers in the process of the distribution of agricultural support.