Monetize your environmental benefits.
Sustainability isn’t just good for the land—it’s good business. Position your farm for premium markets and programs that reward responsible practices with 5–50% higher price points.
From sustainability documentation and certification to value-based storytelling and incentive programs, learn how to turn your ecological investments into market success.
First introduced in 1985 by Michael Porter, the value chain concept is understood as the process by which value is added to raw materials via various production processes in order to generate a final product that can be sold for a higher price. This article reviews what value chains are how how they optimize value….
It is a common practice in the United States to sing Happy Birthday to a person when they survive another year on this planet. However, in China, birthday celebrations commonly take the form of elaborate banquets and are reserved for the very young or very old. Despite being obviously divergent practices, they are both considered…
Have you ever wondered why Wall Street is known for finance or why the California wine industry has been so successful in integrating itself into the global market? In a word: clusters. Clusters are concentrations of complementary organizations, institutions and companies that are components of a given field in a specific geographic location. These conglomerations…
To-date, struggles between management and fishers have resulted in continued difficulties in establishing effective methods to sustainably manage fisheries throughout the world (with notable exceptions). Such struggles can likely be attributed to top-down management styles that focus on input controls and Competitive Total Allowable Catches (TAC), which promote input substitution, effort creep and race-to-catch behavior….
The world we live in is quite complicated. Being alone in this crazy, mixed-up reality can make this truth quite scary. However, even in the big, bad take-no-prisoners universe of globalized economics, there are tools that can be used to help improve one’s chances of successful navigation through these choppy waters. One of the most…
What exactly is a food desert? The term food desert was first coined in the 1990s in Scotland. It is used to describe locations where there is little or no access to healthy foods. This is often due to a lack of “normal” and “safe” food sources (i.e. supermarkets). When residents do not have regular…
“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.” – Abraham Lincoln Agriculture is defined as the science, art, and business of cultivating soil, producing crops and raising cattle. It is more commonly referred to as farming. Without it, society as we know…
The Genuine Progress Indicator [GPI] is a GDP alternative that places value on the overall well-being of the world, rather than only the money we spend and goods we consume, by using 26 indicators to consolidate “critical economic, environmental, and social factors into a single framework in order to give a more accurate picture of…
This article describes how urban farmers who chose to slaughter their own meat are facing new regulations and even bans on home butchering. This is coming after many residents filed complaints that home slaughtering is inhumane and that there are no animal welfare standards in effect. Officials have acknowledged that a growth in urban farming…
This article attempts to answer the questions, “Is environmental concern widely diffused throughout society or is it more strongly expressed by particular sub-populations? How has concern changed over time?” This was accomplished by studying the attitudes about agriculture and the environment in relation to an individual’s geographic and social distance from agriculture. They began by…
