Multifaceted Applications of Green Supply Chain Management

This chapter aims to explain the overview of Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM); the significant activities of GSCM; GSCM and collaboration; GSCM and environmental management; GSCM in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs); and the multifaceted applications of GSCM. Green supply chain is capable of increasing corporate value while considering its impacts on all processes of physical distribution, production, and environment. Managing a green supply chain is about finding the balance between economic and environmental benefits in global supply chain. GSCM recognizes the disproportionate environmental impact of supply chain processes in an organization. GSCM practices can manifest themselves from the process of selecting raw material to final consumption based on the aspects of reduction, reuse, recycling, and recovery. The chapter argues that the multifaceted applications of GSCM have the potential to enhance organizational performance and gain sustainable competitive advantage in global supply chain.

Youth Employability in WB Countries

Transition in WB countries was supposed to enable the establishment of a better economic system. However, not all transitional countries have been conducting appropriate follow-up activities during their transition process. Success of transition depended on the country's internal factors and on their pre-transition economic situation? In all WB countries privatization led to high unemployment rates, low GDP growth and poor living standards especially for youth. At the same time, the transition has had positive effects in other transition countries like the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia etc. The aim of this paper is to research a position of the youth in WB transition countries including Serbia, Montenegro, B&H, and Macedonia. The paper will follow the changes in youth unemployment in the period 2000 to 2014 in WB, other transition and EU15 countries. Comparisons of the achieved youth unemployment levels will give the opportunity to determine which the good practices are used in other developed countries that have resulted with significantly lower youth unemployment rates.

Perception of Romanian Consumers on Ecological Products

This chapter aimed to investigate perceptions and attitudes of Romanian consumers about organic products, in order to study the connection between knowledge and attitudes of consumers and their place in purchase decision-making system to understand their behavior toward organic food. In the first part, after a brief introduction, the authors tried to perform a review of the literature in the field, starting from the presentation of the concept of green or ecological consumption behavior and the notions related to it. A synthetic scheme of the drivers of the green market was proposed as a conclusion of this introductory part. The main concern is about consumption of the ecological products in Romania. The authors identified a number of 17 relevant studies performed in Romania in order to help them substantiate their work. They took into account two issues, namely, Ecological Non-Food Products and Ecological Food Products.

Trends in the Evolution of Romania's Agricultural Resources in the Context of Sustainable Development

Although its share in Romania's Gross Domestic Product is relatively small (about 5%), agriculture is one of the important activities of the national economy, with direct implications on ensuring food security. Achieving an efficient modern agriculture represents a major strategic objective for Romania, imposed both by the need of ensuring food security and the role of this activity in supporting export. In this chapter it is analysed the evolution of Romanian agriculture in the context of sustainable development's objectives, through the resources available in this activity: land, technical means, human resources and financial resources. In doing so, we considered an analysis of the agricultural real estate, labour force, investments and loans used in agriculture on the period 2008 – 2014.

Food Cultural Values

The present chapter presents the results of a study carried out within the Romanian culture and civilization classes taught to the foreign students in the preparatory year. Our goal was not only to familiarize them with Romanian culture, but also to help them better interact and function as a homogeneous group, in spite of their cultural diversity. The paper aims at studying to what degree cultural diversity and identity marks specific to students coming from various countries can be used to facilitate their adaptation to the culture and mentality of the host country and to a multicultural group. Among many aspects regarding Romanian traditional culture and civilization, we included information related to Romanian food and eating habits. Such a topic cannot be neglected if we take into account the fact that individual needs constitute a real issue in the adaptation of a multicultural group to a new culture and lifestyle.

The Role of Irrigation in the Development of Agriculture

The Srem district is home to producers of corn, oilseeds, sugar beet and tobacco, a leading region in the production of pome fruits (apples, pears) and drupes (plums, peaches, cherries) in the country and a perspective area for the development of organic plant and livestock production in protected areas. The current irrigation policy in the Republic of Serbia was not directed at systematic water use with the goal of forming an optimal structure of a market propulsive and a highly profitable agricultural production. The authors in the paper analyse the structure of agricultural production in the Srem district in Serbia and its market potentials as well as the economic effects of irrigation in light of the planned integral irrigation system construction in the Srem district in order to reflect economic benefits of irrigation and its role in the development of agriculture.

Correlations and Patterns of Food and Health Consumer Expenditure

Human diet and health will always be a topical issue irrespective of the times, society, economic development, etc. The aim of this chapter is to highlight the presence or absence of correlations between food consumer expenditure and health goods and services consumer expenditure. Over three-quarters of the correlations between the consumer expenditure categories and subcategories are statistically significant and approximately a half of them underscore a moderate intensity. The patterns of the relationship between food consumer expenditure and health goods and services consumer expenditure for the same countries are identified. Twenty patterns which contain country groups are pointed out for the ten connections among consumer expenditure categories. The correlation between high food consumer expenditure and the high weight of people who are suffering from specific diseases is emphasized.

Managing for the Sustained Success of Organic Food Associations

Systems and agricultural organizations are facing new challenges in an increasingly complex and competitive environment. Opposing the existence of other food producers that show low profitability in their production systems, there are other models that have differentiated through ecological production being able to reach high profitability in their production systems. Ecological agriculture is seen as an opportunity to supply to those social segments that would rather consume healthy products. This article reviews literature on processes and key management factors for the sustained success of an organization, resulting on a conceptual framework that synthesizes these ideas. Mainly it looks at two international standards: ISO 9004 (2009) and ISO 21500 (2012). This conceptual framework is used to analyze the experience of an organization of organic farmers called Camposeven, which counts with farmers with over 40 years of experience in production, processing, and marketing of conventional and organic crops in the region of Murcia in Spain.

Trends and Transformations in European Agricultural Economy, Rural Communities and Food Sustainability in Context of New Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Reforms

Agriculture continues to be quite a debate for the last two and a half decades at least at the European level and for Romania Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reforms has a big impact in developing the convergence to the European agricultural model. Agriculture becomes nowadays a multirole economic sector, with major implications on rural community's sustainability and on food security assurance. In this context, the transformations in European agricultural economy, rural communities and food sustainability in context of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reforms represent an important research topic in the context of EU-28 policy diversification from the larger context of Romanian approach.

Sensory Evaluation in Food Manufacturing

From the earliest moments in time, humans relied on their senses in order to survive. The mechanism of sensory evaluation was not only used to assess the environment where they were living but also the food they were consuming. Manufacturing good food is a direct result of having the right ingredients, recipe and process in place. In this chapter we aim to share some practical guidelines on how to manage when dealing with a bigger kitchen, as in food manufacturing there is always the need of having a systematized sensory evaluation. Given the high complexity of this topic, authors will tackle the subject by generally approaching sensory analysis and its role in organoleptic quality evaluation and will further go through the practical steps of setting the sensory panel room, selection and training of panel participants, setting up a testing panel and interpreting the results.