scholarly journals Vegetable supply chain integration: the case of a trinity cooperative in China

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 767-780
Author(s):  
Lu Wang ◽  
Jianli Luo

China’s vegetable supply chain faces challenges, such as the shortage of technologies for vegetable production, storage and preservation, imperfect rural finance services, and uncertainty in terms of vegetable production and sales. Companies and the Chinese government focus on food safety and security, as well as supply stability. The Meiyu Cooperative is a National Top 100 farmers’ cooperative in China that addresses these concerns successfully. It has established ‘a trinity cooperation mechanism’ to coordinate and integrate vegetable production, supply and sale, and financial credit. The cooperative has successfully built close relationships with farmers and companies, thus achieving financial, social, and environment benefits. This cooperation mechanism represents an innovative model for integrating the vegetable supply chain and providing necessary services based on farmers’ demands. This case study is addressed to senior undergraduate students and postgraduate students specialising in agricultural economics and can also be used for training administrators in food companies.

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chen Ji ◽  
Fu Jia ◽  
Jacques Trienekens

Food security and supply continuity have become main concerns of food companies and societies nowadays. To address these concerns, Jinzhong Food Co. Ltd. (hereafter abbreviated to Jinzhong) was one of the first Chinese meat companies to establish and integrate a pig production cooperative in 2005. Over the last decade or so, Jinzhong has successfully developed the cooperative to stabilize and improve the quality of pig supply, by building relationships with pig producers (farmers) and achieving an exceptional financial performance in the process. The company-led cooperative represents an innovative supply chain governance mechanism in a Chinese context. However, the pork industry has evolved significantly and the time has come for the senior management team at Jinzhong to decide whether or not to keep the cooperative. This case study is aimed at senior undergraduate students and postgraduate students specializing in agricultural economics/agribusiness and can also be used for executive training for the management of food companies.


2012 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 551-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan A. Dias ◽  
Rodrigo H. Willemart ◽  
Antonio C. Marques

Although the theory of evolution is more than 150 years old, a substantial proportion of the world population does not mention it when explaining the origin of human beings. The usual alternative conception is offered by creationism, one of the main obstacles to full acceptance of evolution in many countries. National polls have demonstrated that schooling and religiosity are negatively correlated, with scientists being one of the least religious professionals. Herein we analyzed both (1) the profile of 1st semester undergraduate students and (2), thesis and dissertations, concerning religious and evolutionary thoughts from Biology and Veterinary Schools at the largest university of South America. We have shown that students of Biology are biased towards evolution before they enter university and also that the presence of an evolutionary-thinking academic atmosphere influences the deism/religiosity beliefs of postgraduate students.


2020 ◽  
Vol 98 (Supplement_4) ◽  
pp. 185-186
Author(s):  
Darrh Bullock ◽  
Jeffrey Lehmkuhler ◽  
Leslie Anderson ◽  
Michelle Arnold

Abstract Recent communications with livestock industry employers suggest that students seem to be prepared to publicly deliver scientific information to peers, but struggle to present comprehensible science-based information to lay audiences. Based on this premise, a producer education presentation at local Extension offices was incorporated into the Beef Cattle Science Course. The course has four core areas (health, nutrition, reproduction and genetics) with supporting instructors from meat science, forages, agricultural economics and biosystems/agricultural engineering. Students are presented a case study in each of the four focus areas and are required to submit a written report addressing the issues in the case study. At midterm, students are divided into groups of four or five and assigned to a local county. Students are required to contact the county agent and develop an educational program, with one student presenting on each of the core areas, with environmental stewardship as a fifth option. Each student must first prepare an outline and send it to the corresponding faculty member for feedback prior to developing a 15-minute PowerPoint presentation. Each student is required to deliver their presentation to instructors to receive feedback prior to the Extension meeting. Each student group must develop a promotional flyer for the agent’s use. The producer educational programs are delivered in the evening to 15–50 producers, followed by audience questions. Additionally, students are tasked with developing, administering and summarizing an assessment tool. On the last day of class we have an informal discussion of this experience. For the five years that we have incorporated this into the course, the consensus is that students initially hate the concept but love the experience and appreciate the value after presenting. Agent and producer feedback have been positive.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 621-634
Author(s):  
Yanfei Yao ◽  
Fu Jia ◽  
Wenhui Fu ◽  
Hongdong Guo

The traditional vegetable supply chain in China has many weaknesses, both in the upstream and downstream parts. To change this situation, Songxiaocai Company, a B2B trading platform for vegetables, innovatively solved the problems in the traditional vegetable supply chain by designing an ICT-enabled, demand-driven supply chain underpinned by an advanced ICT architecture design. However, with the expansion of business, Songxiaocai is also facing some difficult challenges. This teaching case shows the supply chain and business model innovations of Songxiaocai, provides a vivid example of how a platform company provides end-to-end supply chain service and can be used to teach graduate/postgraduate students specializing in agricultural economics, agricultural e-commerce and vegetable supply chain management.


2018 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid Le Roux

Background: Undergraduate students as a group are well researched, with focus on enhancing student engagement and improving learning and teaching methods. However, working postgraduate students have become a growing trend in the higher education sector, with little known about their experience. The purpose of this research is to better understand and to gain insight into the inter-role conflict experienced by postgraduate students owing to managing the multiple roles of work, personal life and studies. This article reports the case study of a coaching intervention administered to a group of postgraduate students over a 5-month period. The study concludes that the inclusion of a coaching intervention to assist postgraduate students in dealing with inter-role stress can no longer be ignored. Coaching support is an authentic way to support these students, with benefits reaching beyond the classroom.Research purpose: The purpose of this research is to better understand the inter-role conflict emanating from managing work, personal life and studies, and to gain insight into the role of coaching as a support function.Motivation for the study: There is limited research focusing on the experiences of postgraduate students, who are often working either part-time or full-time while pursuing their studies, and navigating three overlapping role domains simultaneously. Furthermore, even less is known about coaching as a support function to strike a balance between these three demanding roles.Research design, approach and method: This study is qualitative in nature. A coaching intervention over a 5-month period was used to assist postgraduate students in managing inter-role conflict.Main findings: The study suggests that coaching can be used as a method to address the interface between work, personal life and study demands for the working postgraduate student. To ensure successful throughput rates in the allocated time, a new support framework is required to complement the often insufficient academic interventions.Contribution: The contribution of the research is twofold: Firstly, it focuses on working postgraduate students to gain insight into and a better understanding of the potential of coaching. Secondly, it highlights coaching as a potential support function. Very little research exists in the general literature on how to support working postgraduate students in higher education. The research also shows the potential of coaching as a support function to help postgraduate students navigate the three demanding role domains.


Author(s):  
Jiju Antony ◽  
Laxman Sivanathan ◽  
E.V. Gijo

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of Design of Experiments (DoE) in a higher education setting and to remove the misconception that it is only applied to a manufacturing environment. The authors demonstrate a simple case study here to illustrate its application in a typical non-manufacturing context. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology involves the execution of a simple study in the form of an experiment in the Faculty of Engineering, University of Strathclyde. The experiment was performed with the assistance of both undergraduate and postgraduate students in one department in the Faculty of Engineering. Findings – It was found from the experiment that postgraduate students prefer a case study approach of teaching with multiple speakers and prefer their classes in the morning. As for undergraduate students, similar results were obtained but would prefer their classes in the afternoon. Moreover further analysis shows that the postgraduate students prefer a 30 minutes introduction to the topic in a one hour lecture. Moreover the students prefer more time to be spent on the exercises and less time on the discussion. Research limitations/implications – The sample size of the experiment was considered small in the study although this was a pilot study to investigate the use of DoE in a higher education setting. The authors will continue to collect more data for further validity of results obtained from the pilot study. The authors will also explore the use of different designs as part of the future investigations. Practical implications – The outcome of this experiment would help everyone who is involved in teaching to understand the factors and their influences to improve students’ satisfaction scores during the delivery of teaching. Originality/value – This paper shows how DoE as a pure manufacturing technique can be extended to a higher education setting. The results of this study were quite an eye opener for the authors in terms of understanding the key factors which influence any process irrespective of the sector.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. K. Handoyo ◽  
M. R. Mashudi ◽  
H. P. Ipung

Current supply chain methods are having difficulties in resolving problems arising from the lack of trust in supply chains. The root reason lies in two challenges brought to the traditional mechanism: self-interests of supply chain members and information asymmetry in production processes. Blockchain is a promising technology to address these problems. The key objective of this paper is to present qualitative analysis for blockchain in supply chain as the decision-making framework to implement this new technology. The analysis method used Val IT business case framework, validated by the expert judgements. The further study needs to be elaborated by either the existing organization that use blockchain or assessment by the organization that will use blockchain to improve their supply chain management.


Author(s):  
Nuramilawahida Mat Ropi ◽  
◽  
Hawa Hishamuddin ◽  
Dzuraidah Abd Wahab ◽  
◽  
...  

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