WERA_OLD072: Agribusiness Research Emphasizing Competitiveness
Statement of Issues and Justification
The agribusiness system is made up of three sectors: farm production, agricultural inputs, and processing/marketing. Each sector provides a different view of how agriculture and related industries impact the state. Agriculture continues to change rapidly creating challenges for members throughout the agribusiness system.Farm production has changed dramatically over the past 150 years in America. Up until the Civil War, 90 percent of American families made their living and were entirely self sufficient from the products produced on the farm. Today, however, all farm employees (proprietors and laborers) total just over one percent of the population.
At the same time, farmers moved to industrial jobs over the past decades, there was increased growth in businesses that began to specialize in the inputs that farmers used in production agriculture which includes such items as chemicals, seed, fertilizer, feed, fuel, and machinery. There has also been tremendous growth in the service component of this sector where we have seen explosive growth in the areas of horticulture and landscape architecture.
The need for commodity processing and marketing has also moved off of the farm. The individual farmer found that it was no longer efficient to do his/her own processing of commodities grown on the farm. Technological changes that are still continuing today have instead led to the evolution and growth of processing and marketing firms. The WCC-72 Coordinating Committee continues to play an important role in tracking and facilitating these changes by promoting and facilitating research and educational workshops in the following areas: agribusiness competitiveness, strategic management, industrial organization, international trade, evaluation of business performance, analysis of consumer preferences, agricultural industrialization, transportation and logistics, supply chain management, traceability, food safety, and public policy.
The committee chooses from among these as well as other timely issues each year and brings together people from extension, research, and teaching in an attempt to better understand how agriculture participants are affected by the ever-changing environment. We always encourage graduate students to participate as well, providing them with opportunities to discuss their research efforts and get constructive feedback from the group as a whole.
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