1,720,963 research outputs found
Cluster farming : a vegetable marketing strategy for smallholder vegetable farmers in Southern and Northern Mindanao
Full text linkWith increasing population, rising household income and greater urbanisation in the Philippines, markets are emerging for the vegetable industry to supply hotels, hospitals, supermarkets, restaurants and fast food chains. These institutional buyers, who need more vegetables for their menus, are looking for reliable suppliers who can provide a constant supply at a good price and maintain good quality. Smallholder vegetable producers acting independently are generally unable to meet the quality specifications or to supply the institutional market at a competitive price. More recently, their inability to supply has been exacerbated by increasing competition from imported products. As the majority of the vegetable farmers in the Philippines cultivate less than 3 hectares, producers must collaborate to consolidate their products. One of the many alternatives for collective vegetable marketing is to form clusters.Cluster farming involves grouping farmers who work together to consolidate products to sell to the market. Two cluster farming approaches have been identified: an area based and a commodity based approach. In the area-based approach, farmers come together based on proximity of farms and trading posts, while in the commodity based approach, farmers plant the same vegetable and combine their product to achieve a larger volume of more consistent quality produce. The main objectives of cluster farming are to consolidate smallholder farmers’ produce, deliver in bulk to save on transportation and transaction costs, and to increase income.For the three cluster groups studied, the monthly income for smallholder farmers was found to increase for only one cluster. Nevertheless, most cluster members believed that they were financially better off after joining the cluster. After joining the cluster, smallholder farmers received other substantial, mostly non-monetary benefits such as access to markets, market information, market and production linkages, technical and financial support, and production inputs.Institutional support in the form of training, building and enhancing network capacity, market information, material support and access to markets are required to facilitate the success of the clusters
Perceptions of Southern Mindanao Farmers On the Quality of Temperate Vegetables
Full text linkIn Barangay Kapatagan, Digos City, Southern Mindanao Philippines, vegetable farmers hold a specific worldview on what quality vegetables are. This paper aims to define this worldview, compare this with expectations of marketing intermediaries down the vegetable supply chain, and assess the gaps between these views. Discrepancies between and among the definitions of the different groups affect the entire chain because of incompatible decisions in production, marketing and quality management. These decisions contribute to the efficiency or inefficiency of the entire chain. IntroductionCrop Production/Industries, Productivity Analysis,
Perceptions of Southern Mindanao Farmers On the Quality of Temperate Vegetables
Full text linkIn Barangay Kapatagan, Digos City, Southern Mindanao Philippines, vegetable
farmers hold a specific worldview on what quality vegetables are. This paper aims to
define this worldview, compare this with expectations of marketing intermediaries
down the vegetable supply chain, and assess the gaps between these views.
Discrepancies between and among the definitions of the different groups affect the
entire chain because of incompatible decisions in production, marketing and quality
management. These decisions contribute to the efficiency or inefficiency of the entire
chain.
Introductio
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Cluster Farms in Mindanao: Are Smallholder Farmers’ Expectations Being Fulfilled?
Full text linkCluster farming means grouping farmers together to consolidate their produce to deliver in bulk, thus saving transportation and transaction costs. As this marketing strategy is an alternative to traditional vegetable marketing practices in the Philippines, there is a need to evaluate the extent to which cluster farming has fulfilled the farmers’ expectations. Th e results demonstrate that even though farmers may not be financially better off, most of the cluster members’ expectations had been met after joining the cluster
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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