Journal articles on the topic 'Small-scale business traders'

The purpose of the study was to explore how public libraries in Meru County, Kenya, address the information needs of small-scale business enterprises (SBEs) in the region. It was carried out from 2013 to 2015. A quantitative approach and survey research design were adopted to collect data from SBE traders and staff from three public libraries in Meru County. The study found that the business information needs of SBEs are myriad, sector-specific and cut across all stages of business development. These needs are fulfilled by consulting informal information resources and places. The few SBEs traders who were using public libraries for business information expressed high levels of satisfaction. The study concludes that public libraries have facilitative and functional roles of providing business information to SBEs by collaborating with like-minded stakeholders. The study recommends symmetrical dissemination of business information and the re-positioning of public libraries as community development centers by providing value-based and sector-specific business information solutions.

A mathematical model of micro-finance investment using profit-loss sharing scheme are made and implemented to simulated data. Here profits from the venture will be shared in a portion between the investor and the entity running the business. The scheme can be classified as Musharaka type of investment in Sharia economy. The proposed model is theoretically implemented with data from small-scale traders at a local traditional market who have small turnover. They are common target of usurers who lend money with high interest rate and penalties. If the traders are in unfortunate conditions, they are potentially in poorer condition than before committing themselves to the usurer. In the conventional practices of the profit sharing scheme, the investor will get a fixed portion of the trader’s income, which is applied for all kind of small-scale traders. If the traders are diligent and hard worker and have very high turnover, then the investor will gain much more profit whether the contributed capital is small or large. In this paper, the scheme is implemented using Semi-Fuzzy Logic Approach so that the profit-loss sharing scheme can achieve its intended goal, which is to make a profitable investment not only for the investor but also for traders. The approach is not fully using Fuzzy Logic because some variables are still in crisp numbers and the optimization problem is regular in the form of crisp numbers. Based on the existing data, the results show that the optimal profit share is depended on the income of the traders. The higher the income coming from the venture, the lesser the profit share for the investor which is reasonable with the fixed initial contributed capital. Keywords: Profit-Loss Sharing, Fuzzy logic, Musharaka, Optimization, Mathematical modelJEL Classification: C61, D60

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to ascertain the reasons for starting the new small business by the people and also to find out the difficulties they experienced at the time of and after starting their business at Pabna and Gazipur – two districts of Bangladesh.Design/methodology/approachTo attain the objectives, both primary and secondary data have been used. To collect the primary data, an interview schedule has been used to interview the selected 250 small entrepreneurs. For secondary sources, the journal, article, web site, textbooks, etc. have been consulted.FindingsThe paper reveals that money earning for family, self‐employment, relief from the curse of unemployment, family business tradition, previous experience of the similar or different line of business, lack of higher formal education, etc. are the broad general reasons for start‐up of new business. Shortage of fixed and working capital, lack of training and business skill, lack of collateral free institutional support, lack of experienced and reliable employees, etc. are the common factors that inhibit the entrepreneurs to start and run their business smoothly.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper is limited to two districts and trading enterprises only. Owing to time and resource constraints and non‐availability of official records of the number of small‐scale traders, statistically representative sampling cannot be chosen. In order to capture a large sample size, almost all trading concerns of Pabna and Gazipur will have to be visited, which is almost impossible. However, some of the limitations are overcome by synthesizing information from a number of sources. The present paper provides a starting‐point for further research in the small‐scale trading of suburban areas of other districts.Originality/valueThe paper provides useful information about the starting of new small businesses and initial difficulties.

Rice production and processing over the years has been on an increase with more small holders entering the business. This study on profitability of processing and marketing of small scale rice processors had as objective to analyse the profitability levels of rice processing and marketing by small scale processors, determine the value added to the commodity at each stage and also identify the constraints faced by these processors. The study used primary data collected using well-structured questionnaire from millers only, miller traders for white/parboiled rice through a multistage sampling technique. Results showed that the net processing income (3,151,201), value added (8,147,456) and efficiency (138) for miller-traders of white rice was highest, followed by miller-traders for parboiled rice and lastly millers only. Results further showed that millers only had Benefit/cost ratio of 0.4 indicating that milling only is not profitable due to small quantities milled, and high fixed cost. Miller-traders for parboiled rice had a benefit/cost ratio of 2.3 implying that their venture is most profitable. Based on the results, it was recommended that millers only should purchase large quantities of paddy to enable them reduce the overhead cost. Also the services of parboilers should reflect in the sales price of parboiled rice so that the parboiling services can be paid for.

The focus of this research to investigate the women who participate to trade in regional market. It concerns with entrepreneur spirit among Minangkabau societies and explores the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic empowerment either locally and nationally. The presence of women traders is an incubator entrepreneur spirit for next generation. It also contributes to the economic empowerment of West Sumatra in particular and the national. Model development of entrepreneurship spirit in starting a small business and acted by an individual (one-man enterprise), and then put family (family enterprise), evolving toward small companies (small scale enterprise), medium-scale enterprises (medium scale enterprise), and the company (big scale enterprise).

The study, carried out in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya, was selected as a case study of the use of mobile telephones among small-scale goods and service providers in a relatively slowly moving urban place like Shillong. The study attempts to observe different sectors of traders and goods and service providers of perishable and non-perishable items using mobile telephones. The attempt is to see if the mobile device has evolved as a grand tool to overcome various obstacles in the expansion and extension of livelihood and business opportunities, and understand the how changes in communication technology have an enabling influence in people’s business lives—as a resource for increasing clientele, improving sales, and connecting to new markets, buyers and vendors. Differences are greatly found to lie in the type of goods and service provider, types of clientele being targeted (local versus international) and scale of operations.

Based on baptismal parish records, this paper analyses the relative market share between slave traders in Luanda from 1798 to 1804. In the context of high Atlantic demand for slaves, the baptism of cabeças (term used to refer to adult slaves destined for sale) show that the market was at the same time open and concentrated. Alongside many small-scale merchants, that sold a few slaves at a time, an extremely reduced number of large-scale traders dominated the trade in people. However, this select group of nearly monopolistic traders was heterogeneous, since it was composed of different kinds of people, including vessel captains, members of the Luanda elite and men from other parts of the Portuguese monarchy (Brazil and Portugal). The conclusion reached is that the intense participation of different social groups in the business meant that the market for captives had wide political, moral and social support.

This study was aimed to determine the principal factors that may affect any development of the cattle business and know what strategies can be applied in the development of the cattle business in the District WuryantoroWonogiri. Research method used in this study was a mixed method collect qualitative and quantitative primary data from respondents and secondary data from relevant agencies, namely BPS Wonogiri, Wonogiri District Agriculture Office, and Subdistrict Wuryantoro. Research sampling was determined by convenience sampling of 60 farmers, and 10 respondents from public government and cattle traders. Analysis of data using internal and external situation analysis, also SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis qualitative of internal factors resulted in the identification of Strength and Weakness contained in the cattle business that consists of human resources, financial condition, operations / production, management, marketing. The analysis of external factors resulted in the identification of factors external in the form of opportunity and threats that exist in the beef cattle business as consisting of social, economic, public policy, and technology. The results of the matrix analysis showed results that the internal factors of 1.09 (on the x-axis), and external factors of 0.23 (on the y-axis).Hence,appropriate strategy in the development of beef cattle farms was in quadrant I that support aggressive growth policy (GrowthOriented Strategy),which uses strength to gain opportunities, profits in the cattle business.

<p>November 8^th, 2016 was a path breaking day in Indian economy when Govt. of India has demonetized the high value currency notes and replaced with new notes of Rs.500 and Rs.2000. This move Govt. was taken to clean the black money from the market, to inspire digital economy and to reduce the ‘Cash’ payment culture of some people for tax evasion. The overnight decision changed the life of many people in India. Thousands of people they waited in long queues in front of Banks, ATMs for money. Entire social life of people throughout the country got distracted. Many poor daily wage workers were left with no job and income as owners were unable to pay their daily wage because of less cash, around 15 lakh jobs have been obsolete during this one year.</p><p> Despite Govt. of India has taken a bold step to make India corruption free and inspire the people in cashless transaction but after one year can we say India is really corruption free? Can we observe any significant improvement in cashless transactions? Can we see the digital payments have significantly improved for common general man?</p><p>Many reports stated that Country’s automobile and real estate sectors are highly affected and World Bank has downgraded the Indian economy’s growth forecast as sharp falls. The empirical findings suggest that the impact of demonetization on GDP growth during Q3 and Q4 of 2016-17 was mostly felt in construction and real estate, but the good thing was that because of stronger growth in manufacturing, agriculture, mining and electricity the overall impact on gross domestic product growth was modest.</p><p>Many reports stated that small traders have immensely affected after demonetization because of the cash crunch and lack of infrastructure like digital payment system etc. Small traders in retail sector (grocery shops etc), service sector (restaurants, nursing homes etc.), gems and jewellery, small traders in agricultural products, SMEs, small dealers, professionals like doctors, lawyers etc, have highly affected because of demonetization during last one year. So my objective to find out whether the small traders have really affected or not. If they are affected then how they have affected?</p><p>The main objective of this paper is to study the impact of demonetization on the small scale traders at Cooch Behar District of West Bengal and how it affected their business. As we all know that Cooch Behar is the princely state of West Bengal which is located very near to Assam, Bhutan and Siliguri region. As a district town Cooch Behar has a high significance in businesses with Northeast, Siliguri and Bhutan. I prepared a questionnaire and surveyed to 50 small scale businessmen at Cooch Behar district and tried to find their perception on demonetization and its impacts on their businesses during last one year. The study at Cooch Behar district may reflect the status of small traders for entire country. Another objectives I have kept here to study whether demonetization really eradicated corruption from India and whether demonetization has changed the behavior of the citizens of the country in cashless transactions?</p>

The research aims to describe Qardhul Hasan financing and recognize the problems faced in micro businesses in the city of Malang. The study was conducted on two research objects. The first study was on a used motorcycle dealer business that received Qardhul Hasan during the 2016-2018 period. The second study in 2019, was the implementation of Qardhul Hasan in small-scale creative economy traders, whose source of funding came from 2.5 percent of profits from used motorcycle dealers. The results showed that the implementation of Qardhul Hasan financing was quite profitable. Qardhul Hasan who is allocated to the creative economy group indicates a feeling of happiness and calm because loan repayments are not burdened with costs, besides having flexibility from the time of repayment. Economic actors managed to collect savings from repaying loan installments. Qardhul Hasan funding received a reasonably good response from economic actors. Qardhul Hasan loan recipients should be able to maintain trust and uphold the agreements that have been built. This study has implications for the development of Qardhul Hasan, namely strengthening the concept of Qardhul Hasan as loan financing, and strengthening groups for small businesses to run the Qardhul Hasan management mechanism JEL Classification: D14, Q21, G51

The majority of income earners of small-scale informal economic sectors in most developing regions abstain from mainstream formal banking systems. These income earners rather “bank” informally. Mainstream formal banking institutions also argue that low income earners are “unbankable” and posed business risk. However, emerging literature posits that low income earners would instead provide a profitable formal niche market. Trends with regard adoption and non-adoption of mainstream formal banking systems amongst small income groups were mixed. This paper investigates such patterns in South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The results of this paper revealed that the informal cross-border traders who trade between Zambia and South Africa were good adopters of mainstream formal banking. The results however found a sharp contrast in Zambia. In Nyanga, Zimbabwe, the results of this paper revealed that there were a few respondents who had adopted mainstream formal banking while 47.2% of communal cattle farmers in South Africa had adopted mainstream formal banking systems through savings against 52.8% who were left out. Adoption or non-adoption of mainstream formal banking systems patterns vary from region to region, and sector to sector even where income earners were almost equals in terms of household income earnings. Mobile banking and low transaction costs might provide motivation for small-scale income earners to adopt mainstream formal banking.

Ginger is the potential high value sub-sector in Nepal for small scale farmers’ livelihoods. In this context, this research was conducted in 2016 to analyze value chain of ginger sub-sector in Salyan district of Nepal. Dadagaun and Tharmare VDCs of Salyan were purposively selected for the study. Primary data were collected using semi-structured questionnaire for household survey as well as focus group discussion (FGD), key informant interview (KII) and rapid market appraisal (RMA) survey were used. Household level cross-sectional data from 140 households (70 from Dadagaun and 70 from Tharmare VDC) were sampled using simple random sampling technique. Descriptive statistics, and value chain analysis were used to analyse data. Average land under ginger cultivation was 1.62 ropani which was higher in Dadagaun (2.17 ropani) than Tharmare (1.07 ropani) and found statistically significance different at 1 percent level. The average marginal cost of fresh ginger was NRs. 12.15/kg. Local traders were the major market actor influencing the price of ginger and bargaining power as the major factor whereas farmers were seemed weaker in the value chain due to low bargaining power with lack of market information. Huge marketing margin (NRs. 94/kg) and low producers share (14.55%) showed that there was no strong linkage between the producers and traders. This study revealed that ginger value chain analysis in the study area found very unstructured and poor strengthening of business enabling environment, unorganized functional market chain and poor inputs and service provision. Int. J. Appl. Sci. Biotechnol. Vol 6(2): 127-131

This paper focuses on the participatory market chain analysis of agroforestry products in six sites of two districts (Kavre and Lamjung) of Nepal. In total, 93 market actors were involved in the study, in which 80 persons were purposively selected from Local Resource Person (LRP) and Local Resource Group (LRG) members and 13 persons were randomly selected from the local, district and national level traders. Primary data on agroforestry products was collected through Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tools following several field visits. Fourteen agroforestry products in Lamjung and 20 agroforestry products in Kavrepalanchok district were selected for analysis. The findings showed that small-scale production and insufficient service to farmers from the village level agriculture collection centers and cooperatives are the major constraints to effective and efficient market chain development and management. The main factors responsible for increasing the production of agroforestry products are the rise in awareness among LRPs/ LRGs about agroforestry practices along with institutional and policy development to facilitate the marketing of agroforestry products. The paper concludes by highlighting the controlling factors in agroforestry business. Banko JanakariA Journal of Forestry Information for NepalVol. 27, No. 2, 2017, page: 32-45

AbstractConsumer Food Co-operatives (co-ops) have provided consumers an alternative to corporate supermarkets and big-box stores since the 1960s. Producers seeking broader marketing opportunities often turn to co-ops. This study examines how, within alternative food networks (AFNs), co-ops play a role in the emergence of the Domestic Fair Trade (DFT) movement in the USA. The DFT movement is based on the idea that family farms and small- to mid-sized farms in the global north are facing many of the same pressures as producers in the global south. The Domestic Fair Trade Association (DFTA) in the USA is the umbrella organization for a variety of stakeholders. The DFTA seeks to ‘support family-scale farming, to reinforce farmer-led initiatives such as farmer co-operatives, and to bring these groups together with mission-based traders, retailers and concerned consumers to contribute to the movement for sustainable agriculture in North America’1. This study assessed five co-ops (through interviews and document analysis) to determine their experiences with integrating DFT into their business practices. The research reveals that DFT concepts are important to co-operative decision-makers, but they are faced with challenges when it comes to actually integrating DFT into their business model. Insight into stakeholder perceptions and professional-level DFT activities, indicates that co-ops will be a key factor in determining whether the DFT movement will succeed in the USA.

Relevance of research topic. The number of Ukrainian holding-type organizations and their land bankcontinues to grow, "displacing" small and medium-sized producers from the agricultural economy.Since 2019, state policy has been refocusing on forced support for small and small-scale farms, and after the Ukrainian decentralization reform the leadership of the united territorial communities of the new tools they received depends on the development of small and medium-sized businesses. Formulation of the problem. Today, the actualization of local economic development requires significant financial resources from the united territorial communities. And the formation of their budget depends on the effectiveagricultural sector operation. After the Ukrainian reform of local self-government and decentralization, the economic development of the territories and of Ukraine as a whole, depends on the using of new tools and resources by the community leadership. The solution of theagrarian sphere problems of the united territorial communities is in the plane ofsmall agrarian entrepreneurship state support, strengthening of the state control over the activity of large agro-traders, as well as their social and financial responsibility to the united territorial communities. Analysis of recent research and publications. Theoretical questions on the study of small agrarian entrepreneurship in the development of united territorial communities were engaged in such scientists of the Institute of Economics of NASU, Institute of Agrarian Economics of NAAS of Ukraine, as Shemyakin D., Finagina O. V., Lysetsky A. S., Onishchenko O. M., and other national and foreign scientists. Selection of unexplored parts of the general problem. The issue of the impact of decentralization on theagricultural sector development of the united territorial communities needs to be detailed and further researched. Setting the task, the purpose of the study. The article aim is to investigate the theoretical aspect of organizational and legal foundations of the formation of united territorial communities in Ukraine, assess thesmall agricultural business current state and trace its relationship with the activities of united territorial communities for economic development. Method or methodology for conducting research. The set of general scientific methods of cognition and special methods of economic research are used in the work. Among them: analysis and synthesis, generalization and comparison, system-structural and comparative analysis, systematic method of cognition of economic processes and phenomena, index method and method of statistical groupings for analysis of united territorial communities activity development of the agro-industrial complex of Ukraine. Presentation of the main material (results of work). The article considers the theoretical aspect of organizational and legal foundations of the united territorial communities formation in Ukraine, assesses the current state of small agricultural business and reveals it’s main relationships with the united territorial communities activities for region economic development. Territorial communities are voluntary associations of residents of city, village and settlement councils, which directly receive funding from the state budget for the development of education, medicine, sports, culture, and social protection. Financial support from the state gives more opportunities to local communities to implement their own projects. The more active the territorial community, the more projects will be implemented and theterritorial communityprofitability level will be higher, which it will spend on the development of territories. This is the main incentive to attract additional investment to improve people's living standards. In 2020, theUkrainian Cabinet of Ministers adopted 24 orders on the definition of administrative centers and approval ofregional community’s territories. There are 1469 territorial communities in our country. After the launch of the decentralization process in Ukraine – the transfer of powers and resources to places from which the community itself determines the direction of funding, small communities require forresource lack for rural development. The solution has beena decision to consolidate several councils by merging, which allowed communities to use common resources for territorial development. Ukraine owns 60.3 million hectares, which is about 6% of Europe's territory.There are 32.7 millionarable land hectares of land in the structure ofUkrainian agricultural territory, of which almost 9 million are used as pastures, hayfields and other agricultural lands. The quarter of agricultural land was never distributed, remaining on the balance of the state. Thus, state and the communal property include 10.5 million hectares of agricultural land, which is 26% of the total area, of which 3.2 million hectares – in the permanent use of state enterprises, 2.5 million hectares – in stock, and the rest – for rent. Almost 40% of the total number of Ukrainian enterprises in the agricultural sector and 38% of the area of agricultural land cultivated by agricultural enterprises are absorbed by agricultural holdings and large agricultural traders. On June 1, 2019, there were more than 160 large agricultural holdings in the country, they cultivate more than 3.6 million hectares of agricultural land. Thus, today in Ukraine the number of holding-type organizations and their land bank continues to grow, "displacing" small and medium-sized producers from the agricultural economy. Thecommunity agrarian branch is a complex multi-sectoral system, the individual subsystems of which are unevenly represented in different territorial formations, but are in close interaction with each other. The role of small agrarian businesses in the development of united territorial community’sagriculture is constantly growing. In recent years, the share of farms has increased by 30%. With the development of farming in the agricultural regions of Ukraine, the opportunities to solve the problem of employment in rural areas and the revival of territories in general are increasing. Therefore, state support for agricultural producers is an important step in order to obtain funds for small business development in the agro-industrial sector. If earlier the preference of vectors of state support was in large agro-traders, then from 2019 the policy of the state was reoriented to the strengthened support of small and small-scale farms. Such support is confirmed by financial preferences for small agribusiness through regional branches of the Ukrainian State Farm Support Fund. Agricultural cooperatives will receive state support through cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture of Ukraine with the assistance of the Department. Thus, today the promissory note form of payment has been abolished, and 70% of the cost of their equipment has been reimbursed for cooperatives. As a result of the crisis of 2014-2016, many Ukrainians started doing business and many successful cases of micro and small agricultural enterprises operating in the regions appeared in the country. However, barriers to rural development are a lack of financial resources and a lack of economic knowledge. Therefore, in order to maximally support farms and agro-industrial entrepreneurship in rural areas by the state, high-quality interaction and communication on the ground is needed. Thus, in addition to financial support, the state program also includes advising agricultural producers. Experienced specialists will help to structure the business, calculate the financial and create a business plan. In 2020, the budget of financial support for the agro-industrial sector of Ukraine is set at 4 billion UAH, which is only 43% of the limit – does not meet 1% of GDP. the real need for financial state support of a key sector of Ukraine's economy. The implementation of the program of financing micro and small agribusiness has great potential not only in the country, but also within each united territorial community. Each of them, which participates in the program of state support of small agrarian business, annually receives about 75 thousand UAH of taxes to its budget. On a national scale, this is an additional UAH 75 million ($ 3.06 million) in taxes to local budgets over 5 years. The possibility of organizational and legal forms of micro and small agribusiness, according to the current legislation of Ukraine, to hire labor – partially solves the problem of unemployment in rural areas. A significant contribution is also made by micro and small agribusiness in increasing the volume of gross domestic product in Ukraine. Small and medium business in Ukraine brings 55% of gross domestic product to the country's economy, and micro and small business 16%, while in Europe the figure is twice as high, and their efficiency is 10 times higher than in our country. It is the subjects of small and medium-sized businesses in the field of agriculture that are powerful catalysts and stimulators of business activity, determine the unification of all participants in economic relations in the country. Therefore, state support and effective development of united territorial community’sagribusiness create the basis for the emergence and functioning of the institutional environment. Thus, giving 12% of Ukraine's GDP and providing jobs for members of the local community, small agribusiness entities need the development of agricultural equipment suppliers, agricultural processors, research institutions that conduct breeding work and develop modern technologies, logistics infrastructure, market structures, as well as institutions of agricultural education. The agro-industrial sphere of the community is the main means of ensuring the socio-economic development of territorial united territorial communitiesand the effective functioning of rural areas. However, the distribution of agricultural land and land ownership remains an urgent problem for united territorial communities, as in addition to the territorial base, the land is a means of agricultural production. The population of the united territorial community is the main consumer of agricultural products produced by small agricultural enterprises. So, it provides a reproduction of labor for the industry. The vector of development of united territorial community’sagricultural production depends on the availability of natural, productive and labor resources of the community. The most energy-intensive are the production of vegetable crops, sugar beets, potatoes, industrial crops, as well as certain livestock industries, which are more often engaged in by farms and small agricultural enterprises. The study found that in Ukraine, government measures are the main obstacle to the development of agro-industrial entrepreneurship in united territorial communities, because it creates an extremely unfavorable climate for the development of small and medium enterprises or prohibits it altogether. For many years in a row, the sources of budget formation, which are generally local taxes, remain a significant problem in the development of agriculturally oriented united territorial communities. The limitation of incomes of agricultural enterprises and the population is the low efficiency of agricultural enterprises, the main reason for which is the low wages of peasants. The reason for this problem in the agricultural sector is low productivity, which forms the added value of agricultural products. Examining the structure of Ukrainian small agrarian business, its players in general education were classified into two large groups: 1. Farmers and agricultural producers living and working in rural areas. They live in a society within the lands of which they rent shares, pay all the necessary taxes, provide residents of general education with jobs, finished agricultural products at affordable prices. 2. Farmers who are registered in Ukrainian cities, however, use the land of the community, paying only the rent of agricultural land, depleting them due to non-compliance with crop rotations. Such agro-traders enjoy state support, soft loans and other preferences, receive super-profits and in no way contribute to the development of agricultural areas and society. These are the activities of large agro-industrial holdings, the form of interaction with rural general education and the mechanisms of social responsibility which need to be worked out with the help of the following measures by the government and agricultural producers: 1) development and restoration of the infrastructure of the united territorial communities and its elements used by agricultural holdings; 2) use of modern ecologically safe agrotechnologies. 3) training of qualified specialists in the field of agro-industrial complex, their employment in modern agro-industrial companies; 4) state support, restoration and preservation of recreational and health facilities of the united territorial communities, including agricultural lands, which are leased by large agricultural holdings; 5) involvement in the economic activity of the agricultural holding of farms on a partnership basis. Thus, partnerships and cooperation between large agricultural holdings and small agricultural producers of united territorial communities can contribute not only to the development of small agricultural businesses in Ukraine, but also to the socio-economic development of society and rural areas in general. The field of application of results. Thescientific research results on the problems of small agricultural entrepreneurship in the development of united territorial communities can be used in the field of state regulation of agribusiness and united territorial communities to support local agricultural producers. Conclusions according to the article. The agro-industrial sphere of the communities is the main means of ensuring the socio-economic development of territorial communities and the effective functioning of rural areas, because the development of farming opportunities increases the problem of rural employment and the revival of territories in general. That is why state support for agricultural producers is an important step to obtain funds for small business development in the agro-industrial sector.

<div>The strategic food resource in Lampung Province is cassava. This study</div><div>aims to identify the value chain of cassava processed products in Lampung Province. The research method used is a survey, involved 60 SMEs of cassava as respondents. Data analysis uses a value chain analysis approach. The discussion concluded that the main activities on SME value chains consist of input logistics, including procurement of raw materials in the form of fresh cassava from producer farmers, raw/semi-finished materials, and auxiliary materials. The cassava production center in East Lampung is the leading supplier of fresh cassava for the SME. Operation activities including the use of technology and skilled human resources are the key to SME efficiency. SME uses simple technology; the final handling product needs to adopt a market trend. Output logistics: distribution of products to intermediaries and retail traders through direct delivery. The production of SME needs to improve based on market demand. Marketing and sales activities involve some SME medium-scale</div><div>already have good market and distribution networks, but not the small scale.</div><div>Marketing and distribution of products still rely on traditional market networks.</div><div>Services activities carried out by industry include accuracy in meeting agreements with partners, including procurement or delivery, and the payment. Finally, the supporting activities of SME value chains will depend on the ability to identify supplier partners in the procurement of input, and facility needs furthermore will become a node of business cost and profit efficiency.</div>

<p>Beef products demand keeps increasing and its domestic supply is insufficient. Domestic beef production to meet domestic demand is one of priorities in the 2015-2019 Strategic Plan of the Ministry of Agriculture. This study aims to examine feasibility of cattle business, channel supply chain, and supply chain management performance of cattle and beef commodities. The method of analysis using approaches of feasibility cattle business, supply chain channels of cattle and beef commodities, and cattle supply chain management at farmers’ level. Analysis results show that small-scale cattle fattening business on cash costs was still profitable, but its profit was lower or incurring loss if based on the total costs. Medium and large business scales were profitable and depending on the race types of cattle business. Supply channels were diverse and quite long controlled by middlemen, slaughters, and inter-regional traders/distributors. Supply chain management performance of cattle commodity was relatively well structured with low to moderate market integration. To improve the supply chain management performance, it is necessary to implement a horizontally-integrated business. In addition, it is urgent to involve small and medium-large business involvement, as well as partial vertical integration.</p><p> </p><p>Abstrak</p><p>Produk daging sapi permintaannya terus meningkat dan belum mampu dipenuhi dari produksi domestik. Pemerintah memutuskan bahwa pemenuhan kebutuhan daging sapi menjadi salah satu prioritas utama yang tercantum dalam Renstra Kementerian Pertanian 2015-2019. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengkaji kelayakan usaha ternak sapi pada berbagai skala usaha, saluran rantai pasok, dan kinerja manajemen rantai pasok komoditas ternak sapi dan daging sapi. Metode analisis menggunakan analisis kelayakan usaha ternak sapi, saluran rantai pasok komoditas ternak dan daging sapi, serta manajemen rantai pasok ternak sapi di tingkat peternak. Hasil kajian menunjukkan bahwa usaha penggemukan sapi skala kecil atas biaya tunai masih menguntungkan, namun jika berdasarkan atas biaya total keuntungannya menjadi turun bahkan merugi. Pada usaha skala menengah dan besar memberikan keuntungan yang bervariasi dari moderat hingga tinggi tergantung pada ras sapi yang diusahakan. Saluran rantai pasok sangat beragam dan cukup panjang dengan peran utama pedagang pengumpul antar desa/kecamatan dan pedagang pemotong/pejagal, dan pedagang antar daerah/distributor. Kinerja manajemen rantai pasok komoditas ternak sapi menunjukkan bahwa tipe struktur pengelolaan rantai pasok ternak dan daging sapi tergolong kategori “keterkaitan pasar” dengan tingkat kinerja pada level rendah hingga moderat. Implikasi kebijakan untuk meningkatkan kinerja manajemen rantai pasok dapat dilakukan melalui usaha yang terintegrasi secara horizontal, meningkatkan kinerja penerapan manajemen rantai pasok dengan melibatkan usaha skala kecil dan menengah/besar, dan meningkatkan integrasi vertikal secara parsial ke arah lebih holistik. </p>

Coconut as a results farming is listed and abundant in the province Lampung, especially in Bandar Lampung. In Bandar Lampung, has vegetable sales community that stated in the Bumi Waras region, Teluk Betung Selatan County. One of the concerns of the vegetables sales community is a coconut results farmer. We take a vegetable sales community as a partner in this activity, because they have a lot of problems about coconut after sales. Coconut that not salable sold will be moldy and decaying in fast. There should be a way to overcome this problem by making a coconut likeness of the derivative products. The solution offered to overcome the problems is right to the application of technology to process the oil into products were chosen in terms of coconut by virgin coconut oil (vco) using the tools for the coconut cutting process easier and more efficient. In such a manner as there will be increasing the levels of value added of coconut into a product with higher derivatives of the having the benefit of and higher selling values. By this activity involved in marketing devotion is also arranging training on any process affecting the production the virgin coconut oil (vco) on the home industry scale. The selection of products VCO is because the easy to process and small capital, so will not burdensome to the public to go into business. With the assistance of the coconut cutting machine raising revenue among traders because the device is versatile and it could also be used to help the VCO production process. A method of the activities that would be used in their business over the devotion this is the method involving a partner or members of the population, especially a vegetable sales in their activities to get as a whole. The implementation of this activity in addition the results showed in the form of a cutting machine of the coconut from which equipped with a motor with a fuel and other equipment to press coconut to get coconut milk also needs to be undertaken a rise in their ability and knowledge partner or a member of community of a vegetable sales through training coconut product development in this case the practice of making VCO including the packaging commercially. The goals of this training were to the ability of making a product VCO can be to raise the income of in the programs as well.

Abstract: Cassava is one of the commodities in the agricultural sector that has theopportunity to be cultivated and marketed on a larger scale. However, the threatwerefound that involved cassava trading institutions so the cassava distribution channelwas also constrained. This study aims to (1) identify institutional patterns managecassava farming, namely related stakeholder relations patterns, related rules andtransaction costs in managing cassava farming; (2) implement and evaluate thebusiness development model and the cassava farming business institutions. Themethod used is quantitative and qualitative in the form of existing data and tabulationof perceptual data through in-depth interview techniques. The analytical techniquesused are quantitative descriptive, qualitative approaches and Value Chain Analysis.Institutional phenomena are also examined in the cassava commodity trade chain,namely social capital, and transaction costs. The results showed that the cassavatrading chain in Gumukmas District involved 6 economic actors, namely (1) purefarmers; (2) industrial farmers; (3) Traders, (4) small industries; (5) large industries;(6) and consumers. The institutional trade in cassava is not intervened bygovernment policies or farmer groups. The Institutions produced strong social capitalthat can decreasedthe transaction costs.Keywords: Value Chain, institutional, Cassava Farmer BusinessAbstrak: Singkong merupakan salah satu komoditas di sektor pertanian yangmemiliki peluang untuk dibudidayakan dan dipasarkan dalam skala yang lebih besar.Namun, ditemukan hambatan yang melibatkan kelembagaan perdagangan singkongsehingga alur pendistribusian singkong mempunyai hambatan. Penelitian inibertujuan untuk (1) mengidentifikasi pola kelembagaan dalam pengelolaan usahatani singkong yaitu pola hubungan stakeholder terkait, aturan terkait dan biayatransaksi dalam pengelolaan usaha tani singkong; (2) melakukan implementasi danevaluasi terhadap model pengembangan usaha dan kelembagaan usaha tanisingkong. Metode yang digunakan adalah kuantitatif dan kualitatif berupa existingdata dan tabulasi data persepsi melalui teknik in depth interview. Teknik analisisyang digunakan adalah deskriptif kuantitatif, pendekatan kualitatif dan Analisis RantaiNilai (Value Chain Analysis). Fenomena kelembagaan turut dikaji dalam rantaiperdagangan komoditas singkong yaitu modal sosial dan biaya transaksi. Hasilpenelitian menunjukan bahwa rantai perdagangan singkong di KecamatanGumukmas melibatkan 6 pelaku ekonomi yaitu (1) petani murni; (2) petani industri;(3) Pedagang, (4) industri kecil; (5) industri besar; (6) konsumen akhir. Kelembagaanperdagangan singkong tidak diintervensi oleh kebijakan pemerintah maupunkelompok tani. Kelembagaan menghasilkan modal sosial yang kuat yang dapatmeminimalisir keberadaan biaya transaksi.Kata Kunci: Rantai Nilai, kelembagaan, Usaha Tani Singkong

This paper follows a narrow definition of agri-products that include products of agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, animal husbandry, and poultry. Like most other states in India, Gujarat has also prepared several reports and policy papers assessing the potential for agro-processing, identifying constraints in the development and exports of agri-products, suggesting or announcing several important policy measures for removing physical and financial infrastructural bottlenecks, and promoting R&D activities in the sector. However, these exercises lack realistic assessment of the potential, important features of agri-exports from the state, and Gujarat's comparative advantage over the rest of the country in specific product categories. This paper addresses these aspects. A recent survey of exports originating from Gujarat conducted by the Gujarat Industrial Technical Consultancy Organization (GITCO) estimated that, during the year 2000–01, Gujarat contributed Rs 495 billion (or 20.8%) out of the total national exports of Rs 2,385 billion. However, excluding gems and jewellery and petroleum products, Gujarat's share in the national exports is only 9.2 per cent. Compared to this overall proportion, Gujarat's share in national exports in commodities like groundnut, oil-meals, castor oil, poultry, dairy products, spices, sesame and niger seeds, and processed food, fruits, and vegetables is much higher indicating Gujarat's revealed comparative advantage in these product categories. Some important features of the exports activity in Gujarat are: Only 20 per cent are pure traders in the export business. Only a quarter of the units have ‘export house’ or upward status for special benefits. More than 40 per cent of the exporting units have come up after 1991–92. Two-thirds of the exporters belong to small and medium enterprises. Export intensity of Gujarat's agricultural sector is about 12 per cent. Agri-exports represent excess supply and hence highly volatile and fluctuating activity over time. Agri-exports are price elastic. Agri-exports would be highly responsive to exchange rate depreciation. In recent years, Gujarat's agriculture shows considerable dynamic characteristics in contrast to the gloomy official income estimates in the sector. Nineteen out of 30 crops show significant positive time trend in area while five crops show significant negative trend. The cropping pattern in Gujarat has been shifting away from the low value traditional crops to high value commercial crops with business and export potential. A detailed consideration of yield rates of different crops in the state and other states over the past three decades indicates a realistic potential of 5 per cent per annum growth rate for agriculture in Gujarat over the next eight to ten years. In order to ensure exclusive and regular supply to the export market, quality standards have to be according to the foreign destination and not the domestic market. This calls for large-scale production, assured input supplies, good logistics, infrastructural facilities, R&D activities, and technological upgradation. This involves giving priority to investments in several infrastructural facilities and agricultural R&D besides perfecting agricultural land market and encouraging contract farming in the state.

In view of the evidence that poor savings can inhibit investment decision by borrowers of surplus funds, and that countries with well-established and efficiently utilised financial services have considerably less poverty, the study examines factors influence saving account ownership in Ghana using econometric approach. We used empirical evidence with data sourced from informal market traders in selected major market centres in Ghana. Using probit regression analysis, the results suggest that financial educations, number of income-generating ventures engaged in by the market trader are major predictors of savings account ownership status. Other predictors include demographic characteristics such as gender, age, marital status and number of dependents. It is, therefore, recommended that banks and financial institutions should intensify financial education strategies to boost savings mobilization. Government’s policy intervention should be directed towards informal sector enterprise development to the crowd in revenue in order to motivate decisions to save. Also, the National Board for Small Scale and informal Businesses in Ghana should intensify education on how to sustain diverse income generation ventures to fetch income from multiple sources in order to encourage behavioural intentions to save.

Purpose – The users of construction technologies such as builders and trades people have been acknowledged as sources of potentially important innovations. These innovations may be in the form of safer, less labour intensive, or cheaper methods and processes. The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the Australian construction industry is providing an environment where user-based innovation is being supported and implemented. Design/methodology/approach – An explorative study was undertaken to provide an insight into actual experiences of the implementation of user-based innovation. The data were collected through face-to-face semi-structured interviews providing case studies on multiple aspects of the implementation of innovative construction technologies. The cases involved a cross section of advances, including product, tool, and system technologies. Findings – The main motivation behind developing the technologies was problem solving. The associated industries of manufacturing and retail, as well as consultants within the construction industry present the greatest barriers to implementation. Originality/value – This research provides a better understanding of the factors that are preventing the successful implementation of user-based innovative construction technologies in small firms.

ABSTRAKKeterbatasan informasi dan data mengenai nilai ekonomis dan potensi pemasaran ikan sagela asap di Provinsi Gorontalo menjadi dasar utama penelitian ini. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui potensi pasar, ramalan pasar, peluang pasar dan saluran tata niaga ikan sagela asap di Provinsi Gorontalo. Penelitian ini dilaksanakan di propinsi Gorontalo pada Bulan Januari- Agustus 2018. Jenis penelitian yang digunakan adalah survei dengan responden yaitu produsen sebanyak 8 orang, pedagang besar 6 orang, IKM 2 orang dan pedagang pengecer dan konsumen akhir sebagai data pendukung yang jumlahnya disesuaikan dengan kondisi suatu lokasi. Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan menggunakan daftar pertanyaan sebagai alat pengumpulan data. Data dianalisis dengan menghitung total potensi pasar ikan sagela asap di daerah penghasil sagela dan daerah pemasaran ikan sagela asap yang ada di Propinsi Gorontalo, kemudian menghitung ramalan pasar dan peluang pasar usaha ikan sagela asap yang ada di Propinsi Gorontalo. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa potensi pasar ikan sagela asap yang ada di propinsi Gorontalo sebanyak 64.410 jepit/bln dengan estimasi nilai rupiah sebesar Rp1.301.500.000,-/bln, ramalan pasar ikan sagela asap sebanyak 40.710 jepit/bln dan peluang pasar ikan sagela asap sebanyak 23.700 jepit/bln. Bentuk Saluran tata niaga ikan sagela asap yang ada di propinsi Gorontalo yaitu mulai dari produsen baik itu produsen lokal maupun produsen luar provinsi kemudian menjualnya ke pedagang besar, IKM dan pedagang pengecer untuk seterusnya ke konsumen akhir baik itu konsumen lokal maupun konsumen luar propinsi.Title: Potency Of Smoked Halfbeaks’s Market (Hemirhamphus sp.) In The Gorontalo ProvinceABSTRACT Information and data limitation on economic value and marketing potential of smoked halfbeaks in Gorontalo Province are the main basis of this research. This study aims to determine the market potential, market forecast, market opportunities and trade channels for smoked halfbeaks in Gorontalo Province. This research was carried out in Gorontalo Province in January-August 2018. The type of research used was a survey with respondents, namely eight producers, six large traders, two small and medium scale industries, retailers and end consumers as supporting data adjusted for local conditions. This research was conducted using a questionnaire as data collection tool. The data were analyzed by calculating the total market potential of smoked halfbeaks in the halfbeaks producing area and marketing area of smoked halfbeaks in Gorontalo Province, then calculating the market forecast and market opportunities of smoked halfbeaks business in Gorontalo Province. The results showed that market potential of smoked halfbeaks in Gorontalo Province was 64,410 bundles / month with an estimated value of 1,301,500,000 rupiah/ month, the market forecast for smoked halfbeaks is 40,710 bundles / month and the market opportunity for bundles is 23,700 bundles / month. The form of the smoked halfbeaks trading system in Gorontalo Province, starting from producers, both local and outside provinces, then selling it to wholesalers, SMIs and retailers to the end consumers, both local and outside the province.

In order to develop industrial sector, Kota Bandung develop ten industrial and trades areas. One of the industrial and trades area is Binong Jati Knitting Industrial and Trade Centre, which is potentially in absorbing the employment. The objectives of the study are to identify the condition of Binong Jati Knitting Industrial and Trade Centre today and to analyze relationship between labor absorption and several economic variables in Binong Jati Knitting Industrial and Trade Centre. This research use primary data which collected from 55 business unit as a sample from 120 population. Analysis method is descriptive statistic and linier regression. According to our field observation and interview, most of the unit business in Binong Jati Knitting Industrial and Trade Centre is small and middle scale industries. In term of number of employment, Binong Jati Knitting Industrial and Trade Centre is in the second rank after Cibaduyut Shoes Industrial Centre. In recent years, units business and number of workers has decreased. According to regression analysis, in Binong Jati Knitting Industrial and Trade Centre, size of employment is negativelly related with wage rate, positively related with price of raw material, number of sales, labor productivity, and number of machine units.

AbstractThe economic, social, and political reforms of the former Soviet Union gave rise to a flourishing international peddling trade variously termed “shuttle trading,” “a suitcase trade,” or at times “trading tourism.” Small at first in the later 1980s, by the mid-1990s the shuttle trade expanded to include millions of people and came to constitute the backbone of Russian consumer trade. Initially the government was willing to “look the other way” or even support the shuttle trade as a way to provide for the collapsing consumer market in Russia. Yet the government drastically underestimated the vast number of people that the trade would attract and subsequently the scale and longevity of the trade. By 1993 and then progressively into the 1990s, the government aimed to bring this highly problematic aspect of the emerging market under its control, both by the means of regulating private businesses and creating a more business-conducive environment and by improving border control in order to make the borders “hard”. Thus this article analyzes the shuttle trade to demonstrate the ways in which decision makers, by accumulating raw data about the scale of the trade, border crossing, and the trade's social consequences, utilized these statistics in creating regulatory measures that simultaneously attempted to shape both the border control and customs regulations and the emerging free market space of the post-Soviet Russia.

The emergence of gay identities in Istanbul is often regarded as a practical result of mobilisation by minority sexual rights NGOs. Indeed, Istanbul Pride emerged in the early 2000s as a widely-referenced exemplar of the political promise of street-level activism in Turkey. Tracing how gay initially was used in the nightlife market around İstiklal Street and reconstructing the early history of agitation for an annual Pride march, I argue that street traders and small-scale entrepreneurs, not street-level campaigners, have played the critical role in prising open spaces where men could come to identify themselves and be identified as gay. Moreover, spaces afforded by particular fixed-place businesses in the nightlife market critically shaped the initial forms of political association involving gay men that were able to develop and consolidate in the city.

This paper attempts to explore the informal source of fundraising for the wholesale and retail traders in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Furthermore, it examine a cost benefit analysis of joining Rotating Saving and Credit Association (ROSCA) from the society point of view. Primary data is collected by filling closed ended personally administered questionnaires from 250 respondents, garnered through the snowball method and selected through purposive sampling. Descriptive statistics, percentage method, is used for data analysis. An empirical example is also used to show cost benefit analysis of the participants of the ROSCA. The study find that 68 percent of respondents in the study area asserted that ROSCA is the only source of fundraising for them. Cost benefit analysis shows that the first 8 participants, out of a total of 12 participants, are better off in joining ROSCA and the last 4 participants are worse off. The study concluded that in the milieu where formal markets reluctant to cater to the needs of the small scale businesses, ROSCA plays an important role in fundraising for wholesale and retailers in the target area; and that society as a whole better off in joining ROSCA; rather than without it.

The rapid development of fishery products in Indonesia as well as a large contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) especially from sea fishing business, unfortunately still not recognized. The scale of small-scale enterprises and the fisherman's status, mostly fishermen who are related to the fisherman's fish marketing system as a producer, have a weak position compared to the trader or industry as the buyer. This study aims to 1) to know Margin Analysis and Fisherman Analysis Share chain of fish marketing to fishermen and retailers; 2) to know the institutional role involved in the marketing of fishery products in TPI Karangantu. This research was conducted from September to October 2016 at TPI Karangantu Serang Banten. The research method used by collecting from primary data and secondary data with descriptive analysis, marketing margin analysis and Fisherman Share analysis. The results of the calculation of Marketing margin analysis and Fisherman Share analysis from fishermen to retailers in September - November were Bullfish Rp.3.999 and 84%, Bloated Fish Rp.5.483 and 82%, Japuh Fish Rp.2.164 and 75%, Lemuru Fish Rp. 2.444 and 89%, Fish Fly Rp. 2.487 and 90%, Mackerel Fish Rp. 5,063 and 91%, Anchovy Rp. 2,461 and 81%.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the effects of a major disaster on the management of human resources in the construction sector. It sets out to identify the construction skills challenges and the factors that affected skills availability following the 2010/2011 earthquakes in Christchurch. It is hoped that this study will provide insights for on-going reconstruction and future disaster response with respect to the problem of skills shortages. Design/methodology/approach A triangulation method was adopted. The quantitative method, namely, a questionnaire survey, was employed to provide a baseline description. Field observations and interviews were used as a follow-up to ascertain issues and potential shortages over time. Three focus groups in the form of research workshops were convened to gain further insight into the feedback and to investigate the validity and applicability of the research findings. Findings The earthquakes in Christchurch had compounded the pre-existing skills shortages in the country due to heightened demand from reconstruction. Skills shortages primarily existed in seismic assessment and design for land and structures, certain trades, project management and site supervision. The limited technical capability available nationally, shortage of temporary accommodation to house additional workers, time needed for trainees to become skilled workers, lack of information about reconstruction workloads and lack of operational capacity within construction organisations, were critical constraints to the resourcing of disaster recovery projects. Research limitations/implications The research findings contribute to the debate on skills issues in construction. The study provides evidence that contributes to an improved understanding of the industry’s skills vulnerability and emerging issues that would likely exist after a major disaster in a resource-limited country such as New Zealand. Practical implications From this research, decision makers and construction organisations can gain a clear direction for improving the construction capacity and capability for on-going reconstruction. Factors that affected the post-earthquake skills availability can be considered by decision makers and construction organisations in their workforce planning for future disaster events. The recommendations will assist them in addressing skills shortages for on-going reconstruction. Originality/value Although the study is country-specific, the findings show the nature and scale of skills challenges the construction industry is likely to face following a major disaster, and the potential issues that may compound skills shortages. It provides lessons for other disaster-prone countries where the resource pool is small and a large number of additional workers are needed to undertake reconstruction.

This study explored the business information services offered to small-scale business enterprises (SBEs) by public libraries in Meru County, Kenya. Public libraries are community information centres, hence well-placed to serve the small-scale business community. A quantitative approach and survey research design were adopted. Data were collected from 296 SBE traders and 20 staff members from three public libraries in Meru County using well-structured questionnaires and interviews. Quantitative data were analysed with the help of SPSS software while a thematic analysis was used on qualitative data. The provision of business information services to SBEs in public libraries was in a desolate state owing to inadequate business collections, the lack of sufficient information and communications technology (ICT) facilities, poor awareness of business information services, a poor reading culture, and weak collaborations of public libraries with stakeholders. There is an indispensable need to establish insightful and holistic business information services at public libraries and to institute measures that would foster their utilisation by SBEs. This can be achieved by elevating library facilities, enhancing outreach programmes, ensuring adequate funding, engaging knowledgeable business services librarians, embracing ICT in service delivery, and by having an appropriate policy framework.

Abstract This article analyses the everyday activities of female traders in open air markets, houses and streets through a comparative approach based on two ethnographies, one situated in Haiti’s Central Plateau, the other in Kongo Central province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In both studies, we identify an essential kind of knowledge needed to do business, namely the creation and maintenance of interpersonal relations that help the trader to form stocks, make journeys, guarantee a clientele, loans and financing in settings of uncertainty and economic instability. Simultaneously, we highlight a moral universe that qualifies more and less acceptable ways of obtaining money. In pursuing this comparative approach, we offer an alternative understanding of economies conventionally treated as informal, proposing an analysis primarily focused on the relations of proximity structuring them.

Business activities among traders in Anambra State seem to be changing from what it was formerly known for especially the Small Scale businesses. This is because of globalization, inadequate financial resources, poor business connections, paucity of experience, inability to cope with competition, poor sales and high stock of inventory, high operating costs as a result of poor infrastructure, inefficient management, poor business education. This study set out to ascertain the extent to which entrepreneurship education affects managerial competence among traders in Anambra State; to ascertain the effect of participating in business workshop on performance of SMES in Anambra State; and to determine the effect of acquired technical know-how on the turnover of SMES in Anambra State. Research questions and hypotheses were set in line with the objectives of the study. The study adopted a survey research design and a sample size of 196 respondents were drawn from a total population of 386 SMEs of the two selected cities in Anambra State. Although 180 copies of the questionnaire were correctly filled, returned and used for the analysis. Descriptive statistics was used for the analysis. Findings showed that there is a significant positive relationship between performance of SMES and entrepreneurship education as indicated by r- value of = 0.79 at 0.05 level of significance. Also, acquired technical know-how has improved traders’ business turnover showing a value of r = 0.75 at 0.05 level of significance. The study concluded that entrepreneurship education is the major ingredient that traders in Anambra State need in order to improve their business, technical know-how, mindset, turnover and other aspects of their businesses to achieve maximum profit. The study recommended that government of Anambra State need to create a conducive entrepreneurship centers within the business eco-systems to enable SMEs operators attend workshops when slated. Government agencies in charge of Trade and Commerce in Anambra State need to guide and assist traders by offering them financial aid, infrastructure as required and less taxation.

Currently, 90% of Indonesian small scale agribusiness actors arebeing faced to the global market era. They are also facing a fast growthrate of global market and the market segmentation phenomenon whichexpects positive changes and adaptations in the agricultural supply chain.The method that used in this study is case study. The study location wasbeing selected based on its potential of horticulture product.The study showed that currently the traders have changed theirbusiness pattern from a pure business to a business which relies more onthe partnership with the farmers. This phenomenon was being emerged bythe consumer demand which expects the continuity of supply.From the Social Business aspect point of view, generally thetraders do the partnership system because of their needs of continuity ofsupply from the farmers, not based on helping the farmers. The result ofweighting showed the total score placed between 28-32,5 which means itcan be categorized as a semi-social business.Overall, the study showed that currently the changes are happeningin the traders business pattern, thus, it gives hopes to the agriculturaldevelopment in Indonesia especially for horticulture products of smallscale stakeholders.Keywords: Global market, traders, horticulture, social business.

The fisheries sector is a strategic sector to increase the country's foreign exchange in national development. However, due to the emergence of the Corona Virus Disease 19 (Covid-19) outbreak, the capture fisheries sector was affected by the pandemic. Fishery business actors, namely fishermen, small-scale fish traders (retail traders), and MSME (Micro, Small Medium Enterprises) owners have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The income of fishery business actors has decreased due to decreasing market demand so that fish prices have also decreased. It is more difficult for fishery business actors to market their fishery products. Fisheries actors must be able to take advantage of opportunities during a pandemic by changing the marketing system to digital or online based so that capture fisheries products can be absorbed optimally. Therefore, there is a solution to overcome this problem, namely the application of buying and selling fish, both fresh and processed fish that can be reached by the wider community on an online basis. This application is an online fish buying and selling application that connects sellers with consumers directly with a delivery system with drivers. The application design uses the Waterfall Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) method which consists of six stages, namely analysis, design, implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance. The materials (software) used in application design according there are android studio, firebase, and google map API (Application Programming Interface). The FISHPRO application is real-time, which is capable of updating automatically in the system. The features in FISHPRO are purchase, co-book, discussion, news, nutritional information, accounts, activities. This application is claimed to be a complete package application because in one application include features that are useful for users so that they get more information. Application that is simple, practical, easy and comfortable to operate by the user.

The emerging high level technology is a threat to small scale retail livelihood business in Nigeria. Wood carving business particularly mortar and pestle production and marketing, is an important component of local household economy and culture of many tribes especially in southwestern Nigeria. This study analyzed marketing of mortar and pestle in Oyo state, Nigeria. Primary data were collected through administration of questionnaire using snowballing technique to select 37 traders who are involved in marketing of mortar and pestle in five major markets in Ibadan metropolis. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics to describe socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents while marketing margin analysis was used to determine the profitability in mortar and pestle among the traders. The results revealed that majority of the respondents involved in mortar and pestle marketing were male (90.3) with more than three-quarter having primary education (87.1%). The respondents are in their active and middle age with average age of 38 years. The estimated monthly return on the marketing of mortar and pestle was ₦19,000.00. Vitellaria paradoxa was ranked first among the tree species used in mortar production while Irvingia gabonensis was ranked last. The average price of Vitellaria paradoxa ₦4,000.00 was highest while Pterocarpus soyauxii was the cheapest for all the types of mortar and pestle in terms of size. Majority (90.32%) of the respondents laid emphasis on the type of tree species when choosing mortar and pestle for either domestic or commercial uses. The study therefore recommends that efforts be made towards sustainable forest management and encourage private individuals on establishing economic tree plantations in order to ensure continuous availability of wood species for mortar and pestle business.

This article resituates the study of time in anthropology, moving it from the comparative exploration of internally coherent religions and national territories to the very margins of religions, nations, and capital. Borders recalibrate time by imbuing mundane economic activities with political salience. Dangerous border crossings make temporal registers contingent and erratic, and generative of violence and torture. I show how India’s prohibitions on live cattle exports and Bangladesh’s demand for beef compel acts that effectively legalize animal smuggling, which, nonetheless, remains a risky business. Across the riverine islands of the India-Bangladesh borderlands, small-scale traders and transporters operate according to the distinct logics of militarized infrastructures and legal regimes that generate moments of “signal clear,” marking the temporary opening of border passages and opportunities for sustenance, as well as “armed” times, more sustained periods of heightened national security, and imminent violence. By subjecting the border’s productive and coercive temporal energies to close ethnographic scrutiny, I suggest that cattle’s sacrality reinforces the material world of capital and strife, ruptures kinship ties, and subjects Muslim cattle workers and their families to prolonged periods of scarcity and hunger. This article shows how people’s experiences of the borderland as a space are vitally shaped by fractured, shifting, and contingent rhythms of time.

The Nairobi pork food system is a growing livestock sub-sector which serves as a source of food and livelihood to its inhabitants. The study aimed to map Nairobi's pork value chains, assess their governance, operational challenges and their impacts on food safety risks and management practices. Qualitative data were collected in seven focus group discussions and 10 key informants' interviews on animal movements and product flows, stakeholders' interactions, perceptions on system governance and challenges, and on their potential impact on food safety management. Quantitative data were obtained to show the importance of flows, business operations and market share. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify themes that provide understanding on the governance, challenges and food safety practices in each profile. The predominant chains identified were [1] The “large integrated company” profile which accounted for 83.6% of pork marketed through abattoirs, and was based on a well-structured supply system, with owned farms (representing 50% of their supply), contract farms and semi-contract farms and [2] Local independent abattoirs, accounting for 16.4%, are privately owned small-scale production, supplied mainly (70%) by small farmers from the immediate neighboring areas. The main challenges associated with governance themes included; (i) Inadequate/lack of enforcement of existing regulation (ii) Negative effect of devolution system of governance (iii) Pig traders' dominance (iii) Lack of association at all system nodes, and (iv) Male dominance across the pig system. The main challenges reported included; (i) Lack of capital to upscale (ii) Poor infrastructure (iii) Pig shortage (iv) Excessive regulation (v) Lack of training (vi) Diseases (v) Lack of knowledge (vi) Unfair competition. Food safety themes were associated with (i) Inadequate slaughter facilities forcing traders/farmers to undertake home slaughter (ii) Lack of knowledge on disease management (iii) Lack of training on hygienic practices in the slaughterhouse and (iv) Lack/insufficient capital to purchase equipment's to ensure proper hygiene e.g., boilers. The study provides insights into the structure of the pork system supplying Nairobi, the governance issues important to the stakeholders, challenges and food safety issues. The framework obtained can be used by policy makers and researchers to investigate and develop pork industry and for food safety and disease control programmes.

The concern of business actors during the Covid-19 pandemic is an important and very influential thing on the economy. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, people think several times to visit shopping centers because of their concern that they will be infected with the coronavirus disease or covid-19, this will undoubtedly disrupt the running of the economy and indirectly impact the decline in turnover of business people. will have an impact on small traders who are around the location of the shopping center. This epidemic that has been going on for a very long time has caused the Government to issue a new policy by opening the faucet of the new normal discourse. Where to overcome the worsening economic situation, especially the trade and business sectors, not to get worse, the new normal discourse is echoed, where in the new normal era, people are expected to return to their normal activities provided that they comply with the Covid -19 health protocol. The community welcomes this discourse, those who were previously silent and doing all activities at home, have begun to make plans to carry out activities outside the home, including visiting a shopping center. For this reason, it is necessary to see the extent to which business actors care about health protocols at their place of business, so that visitors feel safe shopping without fear of contracting the virus.The perceptions of these business actors in this shopping center are very much needed to find out whether their concerns have an impact on increasing shopping center visits and can increase business income. With survey research and the method used is descriptive analytical quantitative. By taking samples from the population of business actors in two modern shopping centers in the city of Bengkulu, Bencoolen Mall and Mega Mall, and using a questionnaire as a data collection tool, 40 respondents were obtained, then the respondent's data and respondents' statements were processed using distribution On average with a Likert scale measuring instrument 5, while determining the characteristics of respondents using the frequency distribution with the help of SPSS as data processing software. The results of data processing show that business actors in two modern shopping centers in the city of Bengkulu are categorized as good in implementing the protocol. health Covid-19. Of course this is not a final result, stakeholders are expected to be able to increase the category to Very Good. So that the shopping center becomes a comfortable place for visitors even though the Covid-19 epidemic period has not ended.Keywords: Business Actor Concern, Covid-19 Prevention Protocol, Modern Shopping Center

The presence of cacao industry plays a critical role in the economic development of a country. A study was conducted to determine the cost, return and added value along the value chain stages of cacao in Camarines Sur, Philippines. Sixty-eight farmers served as respondents using purposive sampling technique and interviews/key informant surveys were conducted. Results of the study showed that cacao production has high return on investment of 77.89% and 160% for the farmer and processor, respectively but a low return on investment of 13% for traders. The value added from farmer to processor is Php 590.00/kilogram, and Php 125.00/kilogram from processor to trader. Various opportunities and prospects for cacao production had been identified such as increased technical and production support from the government, presence of R & D programs, increasing trend towards wellness & healthy lifestyle, and increasing businesses offering cocoa-based products. Recommendations include improvement in access and availability of processing facilities, improvement of market information for farmers, provision of trainings to enhance capability of farmers, strengthening of farmers’ groups to increase their access to technical and financial assistance from government and provision of infrastructure support and storage facilities.

Small businesses are in the informal sector among the lower layers of society in order to survive. Global economic conditions amid an increasingly competitive force people to think creatively. Create a wide variety of ideas results, fikir power, which is manifested in a real innovative. Emerging creative economy and bloom like mushrooms grown where - where in the form of a small business, is now becoming a phenomenon. The phenomenon that is present as a result of the effort to be able to defend themselves in a hostile economic conditions.This research was conducted through a qualitative method approach with a descriptive case study that describes the informal sector as a pillar of food security in supporting the social economy. Through informal businesses in this global competition, the fact that businesses in the community canteen trader is able to survive in the midst of heavy and hard to face the era of the Asean Economic Community (AEC) by the inclusion of a wide range of formal business sectors on a large scale. Many investors into Indonesia with the ease of getting the facility. In the end, small businesses in the informal sector with a wide range of creative product capable of competing creative ideas continue to be developed along with the ability and willingness to be applied in the work of innovative, to be able to continue to live better. This is the central pillar of food security which occur in supporting community economy competitive.

This study was undertaken to examine the relationship between trade off variables and market value of quoted small and medium scale enterprises in Nigeria. Secondary data obtained from financial statement of 10 quoted small and medium scale enterprises from 2009 – 2018. Market value was modeled as the function of, non-tax shield, business risk and tangibility. Panel data methods were employed while the fixed and random effects models were used as estimation technique at 5% level of significance. Fixed effects, random effects and pooled estimates were tested while the Hausman test was used to determine the best fit. Panel unit roots and panel cointegration analysis were conducted on the study. The study found that trade off variables has significant relationship with market value of the small and medium scale enterprises. From the regression summary, we conclude that, trade off variables have significant relationship with market value of the small and medium scale enterprises. We recommend that financial managers should institute sound, efficient and coherent capital structure management policies such that will enable them determine the right mix or combination of debt, equity or both that will enhance firms’ value in Nigeria. Firm should expand to a level it does not result to diseconomies of scale and the eventual fall in the value of the small and medium scale enterprises. Government and policy makers should provide an enabling market environment capable of enhancing easy source of capital to enhance firm value in Nigeria. Management of the small and medium scale enterprises should employ more of long-term debt than equity capital in financing their operations, because it results in higher small and medium scale enterprises value. Corporate financial decision makers should employ more of long-term-debt than equity in their financial option. This is in line with the pecking order theory. Management of the small and medium scale enterprises should compare the marginal benefit of using long-term-debt to the marginal costs of long-term-debt before concluding on using it in financing their operations. This is because as shown by this work, long-term-debt impact positively on firm’s value unlike equity capital.

Capture fisheries are very important economic activity and have contributed greatly to the total fishery production in general in the District Naganraya. Fishery system that occurs dominated by small-scale fisheries. Fishermen in Naganraya district has a high dependence on fisheries resources as the main source of livelihood and almost all coastal areas based fisheries activities. Small-scale fisheries businesses have an impact on the fishing fleet and fishing locations (fishing ground) resulting in range of fishing operations is limited. The purpose of this research is 1). Analyzing small-scale capture fisheries system in locations PKN Naganraya district, 2). Formulate an alternative strategy in the management of small-scale fishing locations PKN Naganraya district. Data to be collected in this study consisted of primary and secondary data. Primary data was collected intensively using semi-structured interviews (semi-structured interview) to small-scale fishermen, observation and documentation in selected locations. The results showed that the dominant type of fishing gear is trawl catches beach and species that dominate the catch is Sardinella lemuru and Selar spp. Fish marketing patterns in locations peningkapan fishing activities (PKN) is not through the auction only through traders / large and are twelve strategic through internal and external environmental factors were dominant influence on the pattern of the conceptualization of small-scale fishery management in PKN location Nagan Raya.

Internet access is the course toward interfacing with the web using PCs, laptops and mobiles by customers and how internet works as reliable source to transact funds from one account to another or e-transaction on online purchase through EFTPOS. It depends upon internet speed and based on that how consumers trust online transaction while purchase called reliability on internet connectivity. Plastic money is a medium of cashless transaction where credit, debit, gift and, smart (EMV) cards etc. are considered to use in every day’s life to small scale businesses. Plastic money is used in purchasing any trading items instead of using paper currency which is not always available in any situation of one’s life. India is struggling with its acceptability only by showing 33.45% enhancement according to 2016-2017 data-bases. As of June 2018, there were 3.93 crore master cards and 94.4 crore Visa cards being used in India, which joins individual and corporate cards. The estimation of master and visa card trades in the extended length of June 2018 reached more ₹46,629 crore, almost increasing from a year earlier. Platinum card trades in the period went up by 33 percent to ₹3, 15,627 crores. This project proposal is to address the reason behind such diminished acceptability in India or its relatively high increment in comparison to the previous years’ database. The project also aims the effect of the industrialization of information technology (IT) on plastic money users in India.

Kangaroo Island has embraced sustainable tourism in the hope that it will maintain its integrity as a close-knit rural community. In the centre of the front cover of the Kangaroo Island 1999 Visitor Guide is a photograph of a group of Australian sea lions on a beach. Between the photograph and the garland of native wildflowers which line the border of the cover is a margin of white space. This, along with the absence of humans, conveys a sense of pristine wilderness. The front cover design with its encompassing wreath and purity of white space simulates an iconographic representation which transforms the sea lion picture into a sacred object. The garland of flowers honours the seal in its natural habitat -- the most appealing aspect of the island for the tourist (Warren, personal communication). However, hovering ambiguously among the wildflowers is the possibility that the front cover's frame represents a funeral wreath -- perhaps in memory of those early days when fur traders turned the South Australian island into a slaughterhouse. Or maybe it is as a foreshadowing of the consequences of a tourist "invasion". Despite the sacralising of the seal, the marine mammal remains a commodity to be "consumed" by those who visit. Kangaroo Islanders are aware that tourism has sounded the death knell for many small communities -- in the 1950s the Gold Coast was a small fishing village, in the 1970s Cairns was a sugar cane town -- and are attempting to impose management practices which will control the amount and type of tourism consumption in order to prevent destruction of the island's native wildlife, its fragile biological systems and the authenticity of the local community. Residents' acceptance of the significance of native fauna and flora in recent years is, to some degree, driven by a pragmatism not dissimilar to that of early fur traders: both view the seal as a commodity, although behaviour towards these protected mammals contrasts strongly with past behaviour when sealing was an especially lucrative industry. Although seal numbers have increased, their classification as an endangered species is a legacy to those days when "fur seals [and Australian sea lions] made a valuable contribution to the economy of the colony of New South Wales" as the sale of the skins enabled the new colony to buy imports (Newnham 34). By the end of the nineteenth century changing market demands and severely depleted sources meant native animal skins were no longer a major source of income. Problems of land and wildlife management increased when sheep farming was introduced. With the allocation of land to farming for soldier/settler communities in the twentieth century, heavy tree clearing and overgrazing resulted in problems of soil erosion and increasing salinity levels, problems which also confront those in mainland rural communities. Following the decline in rural commodity prices for sheep, wool and beef in the 1990s, the local community has targetted tourism as one of the preferred alternative industries. Despite some opposition, the majority of locals feel that with proper management and monitoring, sustainable tourism will offer salvation rather than destruction of their island community. Local views are evident in the high profile given to tourism by the Kangaroo Island Economic Development Board (KIDB), "whose 1998-1999 Annual Plan has identified a number of opportunities to develop the Island's tourism infrastructure, and encourage visitors to stay longer and provide more value to the Island" (Islander 9 July 1998). From 1991 to 1993-1994, 85,000 visits per annum of at least one night stay were recorded with an estimated 50,000 additional annual visitors from day trips (Kangaroo Island Regional Tourism Profile 1). By 1998 over 160,000 visitors arrive on Kangaroo Island each year. KIDB's year long visitor exit survey shows viewing the island's wildlife is the main reason why international and interstate tourists travel to the island and is one of the main reasons why intrastate visitors come (Islander 9 July 1998: 6). However, KIDB is aware of local community concern "to [facilitate] development processes particularly towards sustainable development" (UNCSD, Paper 16 22). Community concerns that tourism must be carefully managed to avoid invasion has led to a number of initiatives including the publication of the Tourism Management and Development on Kangaroo Island Working Party Report in 1984 (KI Tourism Policy 1). The publication in 1991 of the Kangaroo Island Tourism Policy acknowledged a need for the island to "diversify and strengthen its economic base" by aiming to be a "specialised destination that emphasises quality before quantity" (12). Kangaroo Island's increasing importance as an tourism destination is also significant to South Australia's ailing economy -- a fact which could impede rather than aid the island's goal to maintain control tourism management. To date they have successfully prevented large scale development. However, Democrats spokesman on Regional Development and Small Business, and local resident of the island, Ian Gilfillan, is reported to be alarmed at the South Australian government's plan to fast-track tourism development. The government's Kangaroo Island Working Group Report talks of "bypassing normal planning procedures" and claims that tourism developments should not have a maximum size imposed upon them but rather should be "determined by commercial factors". Gilfillan fears that the government's "fast-track" development policies "will not only jeopardise Kangaroo Island's unique environment, but will also ensure that profits from tourism will mostly leave the Island and go to the mainland, interstate or overseas" (Islander 22 January 1998: 1). In 1998 a residents' survey conducted by the KIDB indicated that 89 per cent of islanders felt that tourism was either "good" or "very good" for the island (Islander 14 May 1998: 2), whereas the proposed tuna farm at Penneshaw was least supported with only 17 per cent saying it was "good" or "very good" and 60 per cent saying it was "bad" or "very bad". Residents' opposition to the tuna farm is evident in a number of letters to the editor of the Islander. Newspaper articles express concern about the impact of the industry upon the local Australian sea lion population, the island's major tourist drawcard. Besides discouraging tourism, the industry might lead to the "attraction of sharks, entanglement of marine mammals and waste disposal" problems. Support from "CSIRO experts and marine researchers" also lent weight to the local position (Islander 9 Apr. 1998: 1&3). The Kangaroo Island 1999 Visitor Guide markets the island as "nature's pleasure island" implying that it welcomes low impact tourism for those who want to experience a combination of wilderness and comfort. Words such as "visitor", "guests" and "invited" construct an image of the island as a destination for those who might willingly fit Urry's definition of the Romantic traveller -- those wishing to escape so called mass or intensive tourism (46-7). A number of Letters to the Editor of the Islander reinforce the concept of the island as a supportive and hospitable community, as excerpts from the following letter illustrate: The island is magic, but it is magic because it is what it is, and the locals are unpretentious, fun loving, good hearted and innovative. Tart up the island too much and impact negatively on the natural environment and laid back style, and visitors will find somewhere else to go. Kangaroo Island is one of the last places on earth where we can experience what the planet might have been like if we hadn't wrecked it in the pursuit of wealth and power. And the locals remind us stressed out city folk of the joys of a simpler life style. (Islander 2 April 1998: 9) Trish Edwards has visited the island eight times. She advises the islanders that "visitors want to meet locals and get a feel of what it is like to live in such a magical place" and that tourism "needs the anchor of human interaction to make [a location] memorable". Her enjoyment of the island is based upon the seeming lack of "front stage/backstage" hospitality and tourist performance (MacCannell 92-93). Her letter reinforces the concern some local residents expressed to me in interviews I conducted, namely, that tourism must be contained and kept under the control of the local community so that an "invasion" does not destroy what is at the very heart of the island's appeal: its authenticity as a small rural community in a location of great natural beauty where visitors can view wildlife in its natural habitat with minimum impact to that environment. But is this realistic? Tourism is a massive global industry based on our consumer society with its insatiable demand for new experiences and new places. Travel and tourism is the world's largest industry, directly and indirectly accounting for 11.7 per cent of world's gross domestic product in 1999 (WTTC 1). There were 650 million international travellers in 1998, and predictions are that the number will double in the next decade. An estimated 30 to 40 per cent of tourist demand is for nature-based experiences (WTTC 1). This 21st century threat of invasion will be very difficult for Kangaroo Islanders to contain. References Centre for Tourism and Hotel Management Research, Griffith University, Gold Coast. Kangaroo Island Regional Tourism Profile. Adelaide: South Australian Tourism Commission, 1996. "Commission Hears of KI's Concerns." Islander 9 Apr. 1998: 1&3. Eastick, A.B. "Tourism Key to Island's Continued Growth." Islander 9 July 1998: 6. Edwards, Trish. Islander. 2 Apr. 1998: 9. "Focus is on Tourism." Islander 14 May 1998: 1-2. Kangaroo Island Tourism Commission Survey. Kent Town: Tan Research, 1998. Newnham, W.H. Kangaroo Island Sketchbook. Adelaide: Rigby, 1975. "Report Not Looking at Real Issues." Islander 22 Jan. 1998: 1. Tourism Kangaroo Island. Kangaroo Island South Australia 1999 Visitor Guide. TKI Inc. 1999. United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. Briefing Papers, 1999. Urry, John. The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage, 1990. Warren, M. Personal interview. 16 Sep. 1998. World Travel and Tourism Council. Travel and Tourism Economic Impacts: March 1999. London: WTTC, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Sandra Brunet. "Is Sustainable Tourism Really Sustainable? Protecting the Icon in the Commodity at Sites of Invasion." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.2 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/tourism.php>. Chicago style: Sandra Brunet, "Is Sustainable Tourism Really Sustainable? Protecting the Icon in the Commodity at Sites of Invasion," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 2 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/tourism.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Sandra Brunet. (1999) Is sustainable tourism really sustainable? Protecting the icon in the commodity at sites of invasion. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(2). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/tourism.php> ([your date of access]).

Economics of pulse production is still in its infancy, even though literature on the subject has grown in tandem with the volume of business and attention received by the export-import culture, consumed and traded amount. With a distinct shift in the trend of chickpea production within India and obtained high yield productivity, new constraints have cropped up in the productivity sector of chickpea. In spite of these constraints, innovations in chickpea production have come up; for example, low input livelihood pulse based agriculture systems, sustainable and ecological agriculture, etc. in many parts of the world. These have a definite bearing on the long-run payoffs from small-scale agriculture. Moreover, Chickpea production in tropical countries has been found to be economically viable as a farm diversification strategy and as an independent commercial activity, turning our attention on bio-economic modelling. Cross-price effects of chickpea based agriculture products, effects of trade and non-trade barriers on these products, potential conflicts between the development of chickpea production for export and agriculture for subsistence consumption are the other serious concerns that need to be addressed. With the ever-increasing demand for varietal items based on chickpea in the international market, more research on demand-elasticities and its analysis would be appropriate, especially in the Indian context for the evaluation of the current status and prediction of future scenario of chickpea production. Evaluation of the prevalent chickpea based agriculture technologies can be strengthened by specific farm technical-efficiency studies, which is another area that demands attention in the chickpea economics research. To address such leads and lags, global pulse economists in the country need to take up these challenges by having real time field exposure to different segments of chickpea production.

Alfred Hermida recently posited ‘ambient journalism’ as a new framework for para- and professional journalists, who use social networks like Twitter for story sources, and as a news delivery platform. Beginning with this framework, this article explores the following questions: How does Hermida define ‘ambient journalism’ and what is its significance? Are there alternative definitions? What lessons do current platforms provide for the design of future, real-time platforms that ‘ambient journalists’ might use? What lessons does the work of Brian Eno provide–the musician and producer who coined the term ‘ambient music’ over three decades ago? My aim here is to formulate an alternative definition of ambient journalism that emphasises craft, skills acquisition, and the mental models of professional journalists, which are the foundations more generally for journalism practices. Rather than Hermida’s participatory media context I emphasise ‘institutional adaptiveness’: how journalists and newsrooms in media institutions rely on craft and skills, and how emerging platforms can augment these foundations, rather than replace them. Hermida’s Ambient Journalism and the Role of Journalists Hermida describes ambient journalism as: “broad, asynchronous, lightweight and always-on communication systems [that] are creating new kinds of interactions around the news, and are enabling citizens to maintain a mental model of news and events around them” (Hermida 2). His ideas appear to have two related aspects. He conceives ambient journalism as an “awareness system” between individuals that functions as a collective intelligence or kind of ‘distributed cognition’ at a group level (Hermida 2, 4-6). Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks are examples. Hermida also suggests that such networks enable non-professionals to engage in ‘communication’ and ‘conversation’ about news and media events (Hermida 2, 7). In a helpful clarification, Hermida observes that ‘para-journalists’ are like the paralegals or non-lawyers who provide administrative support in the legal profession and, in academic debates about journalism, are more commonly known as ‘citizen journalists’. Thus, Hermida’s ambient journalism appears to be: (1) an information systems model of new platforms and networks, and (2) a normative argument that these tools empower ‘para-journalists’ to engage in journalism and real-time commentary. Hermida’s thesis is intriguing and worthy of further discussion and debate. As currently formulated however it risks sharing the blind-spots and contradictions of the academic literature that Hermida cites, which suffers from poor theory-building (Burns). A major reason is that the participatory media context on which Hermida often builds his work has different mental models and normative theories than the journalists or media institutions that are the target of critique. Ambient journalism would be a stronger and more convincing framework if these incorrect assumptions were jettisoned. Others may also potentially misunderstand what Hermida proposes, because the academic debate is often polarised between para-journalists and professional journalists, due to different views about institutions, the politics of knowledge, decision heuristics, journalist training, and normative theoretical traditions (Christians et al. 126; Cole and Harcup 166-176). In the academic debate, para-journalists or ‘citizen journalists’ may be said to have a communitarian ethic and desire more autonomous solutions to journalists who are framed as uncritical and reliant on official sources, and to media institutions who are portrayed as surveillance-like ‘monitors’ of society (Christians et al. 124-127). This is however only one of a range of possible relationships. Sole reliance on para-journalists could be a premature solution to a more complex media ecology. Journalism craft, which does not rely just on official sources, also has a range of practices that already provides the “more complex ways of understanding and reporting on the subtleties of public communication” sought (Hermida 2). Citizen- and para-journalist accounts may overlook micro-studies in how newsrooms adopt technological innovations and integrate them into newsgathering routines (Hemmingway 196). Thus, an examination of the realities of professional journalism will help to cast a better light on how ambient journalism can shape the mental models of para-journalists, and provide more rigorous analysis of news and similar events. Professional journalism has several core dimensions that para-journalists may overlook. Journalism’s foundation as an experiential craft includes guidance and norms that orient the journalist to information, and that includes practitioner ethics. This craft is experiential; the basis for journalism’s claim to “social expertise” as a discipline; and more like the original Linux and Open Source movements which evolved through creative conflict (Sennett 9, 25-27, 125-127, 249-251). There are learnable, transmissible skills to contextually evaluate, filter, select and distil the essential insights. This craft-based foundation and skills informs and structures the journalist’s cognitive witnessing of an event, either directly or via reconstructed, cultivated sources. The journalist publishes through a recognised media institution or online platform, which provides communal validation and verification. There is far more here than the academic portrayal of journalists as ‘gate-watchers’ for a ‘corporatist’ media elite. Craft and skills distinguish the professional journalist from Hermida’s para-journalist. Increasingly, media institutions hire journalists who are trained in other craft-based research methods (Burns and Saunders). Bethany McLean who ‘broke’ the Enron scandal was an investment banker; documentary filmmaker Errol Morris first interviewed serial killers for an early project; and Neil Chenoweth used ‘forensic accounting’ techniques to investigate Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer. Such expertise allows the journalist to filter information, and to mediate any influences in the external environment, in order to develop an individualised, ‘embodied’ perspective (Hofstadter 234; Thompson; Garfinkel and Rawls). Para-journalists and social network platforms cannot replace this expertise, which is often unique to individual journalists and their research teams. Ambient Journalism and Twitter Current academic debates about how citizen- and para-journalists may augment or even replace professional journalists can often turn into legitimation battles whether the ‘de facto’ solution is a social media network rather than a media institution. For example, Hermida discusses Twitter, a micro-blogging platform that allows users to post 140-character messages that are small, discrete information chunks, for short-term and episodic memory. Twitter enables users to monitor other users, to group other messages, and to search for terms specified by a hashtag. Twitter thus illustrates how social media platforms can make data more transparent and explicit to non-specialists like para-journalists. In fact, Twitter is suitable for five different categories of real-time information: news, pre-news, rumours, the formation of social media and subject-based networks, and “molecular search” using granular data-mining tools (Leinweber 204-205). In this model, the para-journalist acts as a navigator and “way-finder” to new information (Morville, Findability). Jaron Lanier, an early designer of ‘virtual reality’ systems, is perhaps the most vocal critic of relying on groups of non-experts and tools like Twitter, instead of individuals who have professional expertise. For Lanier, what underlies debates about citizen- and para-journalists is a philosophy of “cybernetic totalism” and “digital Maoism” which exalts the Internet collective at the expense of truly individual views. He is deeply critical of Hermida’s chosen platform, Twitter: “A design that shares Twitter’s feature of providing ambient continuous contact between people could perhaps drop Twitter’s adoration of fragments. We don’t really know, because it is an unexplored design space” [emphasis added] (Lanier 24). In part, Lanier’s objection is traceable back to an unresolved debate on human factors and design in information science. Influenced by the post-war research into cybernetics, J.C.R. Licklider proposed a cyborg-like model of “man-machine symbiosis” between computers and humans (Licklider). In turn, Licklider’s framework influenced Douglas Engelbart, who shaped the growth of human-computer interaction, and the design of computer interfaces, the mouse, and other tools (Engelbart). In taking a system-level view of platforms Hermida builds on the strength of Licklider and Engelbart’s work. Yet because he focuses on para-journalists, and does not appear to include the craft and skills-based expertise of professional journalists, it is unclear how he would answer Lanier’s fears about how reliance on groups for news and other information is superior to individual expertise and judgment. Hermida’s two case studies point to this unresolved problem. Both cases appear to show how Twitter provides quicker and better forms of news and information, thereby increasing the effectiveness of para-journalists to engage in journalism and real-time commentary. However, alternative explanations may exist that raise questions about Twitter as a new platform, and thus these cases might actually reveal circumstances in which ambient journalism may fail. Hermida alludes to how para-journalists now fulfil the earlier role of ‘first responders’ and stringers, in providing the “immediate dissemination” of non-official information about disasters and emergencies (Hermida 1-2; Haddow and Haddow 117-118). Whilst important, this is really a specific role. In fact, disaster and emergency reporting occurs within well-established practices, professional ethics, and institutional routines that may involve journalists, government officials, and professional communication experts (Moeller). Officials and emergency management planners are concerned that citizen- or para-journalism is equated with the craft and skills of professional journalism. The experience of these officials and planners in 2005’s Hurricane Katrina in the United States, and in 2009’s Black Saturday bushfires in Australia, suggests that whilst para-journalists might be ‘first responders’ in a decentralised, complex crisis, they are perceived to spread rumours and potential social unrest when people need reliable information (Haddow and Haddow 39). These terms of engagement between officials, planners and para-journalists are still to be resolved. Hermida readily acknowledges that Twitter and other social network platforms are vulnerable to rumours (Hermida 3-4; Sunstein). However, his other case study, Iran’s 2009 election crisis, further complicates the vision of ambient journalism, and always-on communication systems in particular. Hermida discusses several events during the crisis: the US State Department request to halt a server upgrade, how the Basij’s shooting of bystander Neda Soltan was captured on a mobile phone camera, the spread across social network platforms, and the high-velocity number of ‘tweets’ or messages during the first two weeks of Iran’s electoral uncertainty (Hermida 1). The US State Department was interested in how Twitter could be used for non-official sources, and to inform people who were monitoring the election events. Twitter’s perceived ‘success’ during Iran’s 2009 election now looks rather different when other factors are considered such as: the dynamics and patterns of Tehran street protests; Iran’s clerics who used Soltan’s death as propaganda; claims that Iran’s intelligence services used Twitter to track down and to kill protestors; the ‘black box’ case of what the US State Department and others actually did during the crisis; the history of neo-conservative interest in a Twitter-like platform for strategic information operations; and the Iranian diaspora’s incitement of Tehran student protests via satellite broadcasts. Iran’s 2009 election crisis has important lessons for ambient journalism: always-on communication systems may create noise and spread rumours; ‘mirror-imaging’ of mental models may occur, when other participants have very different worldviews and ‘contexts of use’ for social network platforms; and the new kinds of interaction may not lead to effective intervention in crisis events. Hermida’s combination of news and non-news fragments is the perfect environment for psychological operations and strategic information warfare (Burns and Eltham). Lessons of Current Platforms for Ambient Journalism We have discussed some unresolved problems for ambient journalism as a framework for journalists, and as mental models for news and similar events. Hermida’s goal of an “awareness system” faces a further challenge: the phenomenological limitations of human consciousness to deal with information complexity and ambiguous situations, whether by becoming ‘entangled’ in abstract information or by developing new, unexpected uses for emergent technologies (Thackara; Thompson; Hofstadter 101-102, 186; Morville, Findability, 55, 57, 158). The recursive and reflective capacities of human consciousness imposes its own epistemological frames. It’s still unclear how Licklider’s human-computer interaction will shape consciousness, but Douglas Hofstadter’s experiments with art and video-based group experiments may be suggestive. Hofstadter observes: “the interpenetration of our worlds becomes so great that our worldviews start to fuse” (266). Current research into user experience and information design provides some validation of Hofstadter’s experience, such as how Google is now the ‘default’ search engine, and how its interface design shapes the user’s subjective experience of online search (Morville, Findability; Morville, Search Patterns). Several models of Hermida’s awareness system already exist that build on Hofstadter’s insight. Within the information systems field, on-going research into artificial intelligence–‘expert systems’ that can model expertise as algorithms and decision rules, genetic algorithms, and evolutionary computation–has attempted to achieve Hermida’s goal. What these systems share are mental models of cognition, learning and adaptiveness to new information, often with forecasting and prediction capabilities. Such systems work in journalism areas such as finance and sports that involve analytics, data-mining and statistics, and in related fields such as health informatics where there are clear, explicit guidelines on information and international standards. After a mid-1980s investment bubble (Leinweber 183-184) these systems now underpin the technology platforms of global finance and news intermediaries. Bloomberg LP’s ubiquitous dual-screen computers, proprietary network and data analytics (www.bloomberg.com), and its competitors such as Thomson Reuters (www.thomsonreuters.com and www.reuters.com), illustrate how financial analysts and traders rely on an “awareness system” to navigate global stock-markets (Clifford and Creswell). For example, a Bloomberg subscriber can access real-time analytics from exchanges, markets, and from data vendors such as Dow Jones, NYSE Euronext and Thomson Reuters. They can use portfolio management tools to evaluate market information, to make allocation and trading decisions, to monitor ‘breaking’ news, and to integrate this information. Twitter is perhaps the para-journalist equivalent to how professional journalists and finance analysts rely on Bloomberg’s platform for real-time market and business information. Already, hedge funds like PhaseCapital are data-mining Twitter’s ‘tweets’ or messages for rumours, shifts in stock-market sentiment, and to analyse potential trading patterns (Pritchett and Palmer). The US-based Securities and Exchange Commission, and researchers like David Gelernter and Paul Tetlock, have also shown the benefits of applied data-mining for regulatory market supervision, in particular to uncover analysts who provide ‘whisper numbers’ to online message boards, and who have access to material, non-public information (Leinweber 60, 136, 144-145, 208, 219, 241-246). Hermida’s framework might be developed further for such regulatory supervision. Hermida’s awareness system may also benefit from the algorithms found in high-frequency trading (HFT) systems that Citadel Group, Goldman Sachs, Renaissance Technologies, and other quantitative financial institutions use. Rather than human traders, HFT uses co-located servers and complex algorithms, to make high-volume trades on stock-markets that take advantage of microsecond changes in prices (Duhigg). HFT capabilities are shrouded in secrecy, and became the focus of regulatory attention after several high-profile investigations of traders alleged to have stolen the software code (Bray and Bunge). One public example is Streambase (www.streambase.com), a ‘complex event processing’ (CEP) platform that can be used in HFT, and commercialised from the Project Aurora research collaboration between Brandeis University, Brown University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. CEP and HFT may be the ‘killer apps’ of Hermida’s awareness system. Alternatively, they may confirm Jaron Lanier’s worst fears: your data-stream and user-generated content can be harvested by others–for their gain, and your loss! Conclusion: Brian Eno and Redefining ‘Ambient Journalism’ On the basis of the above discussion, I suggest a modified definition of Hermida’s thesis: ‘Ambient journalism’ is an emerging analytical framework for journalists, informed by cognitive, cybernetic, and information systems research. It ‘sensitises’ the individual journalist, whether professional or ‘para-professional’, to observe and to evaluate their immediate context. In doing so, ‘ambient journalism’, like journalism generally, emphasises ‘novel’ information. It can also inform the design of real-time platforms for journalistic sources and news delivery. Individual ‘ambient journalists’ can learn much from the career of musician and producer Brian Eno. His personal definition of ‘ambient’ is “an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint,” that relies on the co-evolution of the musician, creative horizons, and studio technology as a tool, just as para-journalists use Twitter as a platform (Sheppard 278; Eno 293-297). Like para-journalists, Eno claims to be a “self-educated but largely untrained” musician and yet also a craft-based producer (McFadzean; Tamm 177; 44-50). Perhaps Eno would frame the distinction between para-journalist and professional journalist as “axis thinking” (Eno 298, 302) which is needlessly polarised due to different normative theories, stances, and practices. Furthermore, I would argue that Eno’s worldview was shaped by similar influences to Licklider and Engelbart, who appear to have informed Hermida’s assumptions. These influences include the mathematician and game theorist John von Neumann and biologist Richard Dawkins (Eno 162); musicians Eric Satie, John Cage and his book Silence (Eno 19-22, 162; Sheppard 22, 36, 378-379); and the field of self-organising systems, in particular cyberneticist Stafford Beer (Eno 245; Tamm 86; Sheppard 224). Eno summed up the central lesson of this theoretical corpus during his collaborations with New York’s ‘No Wave’ scene in 1978, of “people experimenting with their lives” (Eno 253; Reynolds 146-147; Sheppard 290-295). Importantly, he developed a personal view of normative theories through practice-based research, on a range of projects, and with different creative and collaborative teams. Rather than a technological solution, Eno settled on a way to encode his craft and skills into a quasi-experimental, transmittable method—an aim of practitioner development in professional journalism. Even if only a “founding myth,” the story of Eno’s 1975 street accident with a taxi, and how he conceived ‘ambient music’ during his hospital stay, illustrates how ambient journalists might perceive something new in specific circumstances (Tamm 131; Sheppard 186-188). More tellingly, this background informed his collaboration with the late painter Peter Schmidt, to co-create the Oblique Strategies deck of aphorisms: aleatory, oracular messages that appeared dependent on chance, luck, and randomness, but that in fact were based on Eno and Schmidt’s creative philosophy and work guidelines (Tamm 77-78; Sheppard 178-179; Reynolds 170). In short, Eno was engaging with the kind of reflective practices that underpin exemplary professional journalism. He was able to encode this craft and skills into a quasi-experimental method, rather than a technological solution. Journalists and practitioners who adopt Hermida’s framework could learn much from the published accounts of Eno’s practice-based research, in the context of creative projects and collaborative teams. In particular, these detail the contexts and choices of Eno’s early ambient music recordings (Sheppard 199-200); Eno’s duels with David Bowie during ‘Sense of Doubt’ for the Heroes album (Tamm 158; Sheppard 254-255); troubled collaborations with Talking Heads and David Byrne (Reynolds 165-170; Sheppard; 338-347, 353); a curatorial, mentor role on U2’s The Unforgettable Fire (Sheppard 368-369); the ‘grand, stadium scale’ experiments of U2’s 1991-93 ZooTV tour (Sheppard 404); the Zorn-like games of Bowie’s Outside album (Eno 382-389); and the ‘generative’ artwork 77 Million Paintings (Eno 330-332; Tamm 133-135; Sheppard 278-279; Eno 435). Eno is clearly a highly flexible maker and producer. Developing such flexibility would ensure ambient journalism remains open to novelty as an analytical framework that may enhance the practitioner development and work of professional journalists and para-journalists alike.Acknowledgments The author thanks editor Luke Jaaniste, Alfred Hermida, and the two blind peer reviewers for their constructive feedback and reflective insights. References Bray, Chad, and Jacob Bunge. “Ex-Goldman Programmer Indicted for Trade Secrets Theft.” The Wall Street Journal 12 Feb. 2010. 17 March 2010 ‹http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703382904575059660427173510.html›. Burns, Alex. “Select Issues with New Media Theories of Citizen Journalism.” M/C Journal 11.1 (2008). 17 March 2010 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/30›.———, and Barry Saunders. “Journalists as Investigators and ‘Quality Media’ Reputation.” Record of the Communications Policy and Research Forum 2009. Eds. Franco Papandrea and Mark Armstrong. Sydney: Network Insight Institute, 281-297. 17 March 2010 ‹http://eprints.vu.edu.au/15229/1/CPRF09BurnsSaunders.pdf›.———, and Ben Eltham. “Twitter Free Iran: An Evaluation of Twitter’s Role in Public Diplomacy and Information Operations in Iran’s 2009 Election Crisis.” Record of the Communications Policy and Research Forum 2009. Eds. Franco Papandrea and Mark Armstrong. Sydney: Network Insight Institute, 298-310. 17 March 2010 ‹http://eprints.vu.edu.au/15230/1/CPRF09BurnsEltham.pdf›. Christians, Clifford G., Theodore Glasser, Denis McQuail, Kaarle Nordenstreng, and Robert A. White. Normative Theories of the Media: Journalism in Democratic Societies. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Clifford, Stephanie, and Julie Creswell. “At Bloomberg, Modest Strategy to Rule the World.” The New York Times 14 Nov. 2009. 17 March 2010 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/business/media/15bloom.html?ref=businessandpagewanted=all›.Cole, Peter, and Tony Harcup. Newspaper Journalism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2010. Duhigg, Charles. “Stock Traders Find Speed Pays, in Milliseconds.” The New York Times 23 July 2009. 17 March 2010 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html?_r=2andref=business›. Engelbart, Douglas. “Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, 1962.” Ed. Neil Spiller. Cyber Reader: Critical Writings for the Digital Era. London: Phaidon Press, 2002. 60-67. Eno, Brian. A Year with Swollen Appendices. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. Garfinkel, Harold, and Anne Warfield Rawls. Toward a Sociological Theory of Information. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2008. Hadlow, George D., and Kim S. Haddow. Disaster Communications in a Changing Media World, Butterworth-Heinemann, Burlington MA, 2009. Hemmingway, Emma. Into the Newsroom: Exploring the Digital Production of Regional Television News. Milton Park: Routledge, 2008. Hermida, Alfred. “Twittering the News: The Emergence of Ambient Journalism.” Journalism Practice 4.3 (2010): 1-12. Hofstadter, Douglas. I Am a Strange Loop. New York: Perseus Books, 2007. Lanier, Jaron. You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. London: Allen Lane, 2010. Leinweber, David. Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines and Wired Markets. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2009. Licklider, J.C.R. “Man-Machine Symbiosis, 1960.” Ed. Neil Spiller. Cyber Reader: Critical Writings for the Digital Era, London: Phaidon Press, 2002. 52-59. McFadzean, Elspeth. “What Can We Learn from Creative People? The Story of Brian Eno.” Management Decision 38.1 (2000): 51-56. Moeller, Susan. Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death. New York: Routledge, 1998. Morville, Peter. Ambient Findability. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Press, 2005. ———. Search Patterns. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Press, 2010.Pritchett, Eric, and Mark Palmer. ‘Following the Tweet Trail.’ CNBC 11 July 2009. 17 March 2010 ‹http://www.casttv.com/ext/ug0p08›. Reynolds, Simon. Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984. London: Penguin Books, 2006. Sennett, Richard. The Craftsman. London: Penguin Books, 2008. Sheppard, David. On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno. London: Orion Books, 2008. Sunstein, Cass. On Rumours: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. Tamm, Eric. Brian Eno: His Music and the Vertical Colour of Sound. New York: Da Capo Press, 1995. Thackara, John. In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World. Boston, MA: The MIT Press, 1995. Thompson, Evan. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Science of Mind. Boston, MA: Belknap Press, 2007.

In this paper, presented as a tribute to CARLOS ALBERTO MEDEIROS, the author begins by evoking some of the most important moments in the brilliant academic career of his former student and collaborator, as well as the feelings of mutual friendship and respect that bind the two. The subject of the importance of the informal sector in the urban economy of Sub-Saharan African countries is then addressed in two parts – 1. On the informal nature and informality of the urban economy; and 2. On the multi-segmentation of the informal sector –, which are followed by a Conclusion. The result of many years of careful reflection and analysis, based on field observation, countless literature surveys and exchanges of knowledge with other specialists from the social sciences, this paper is actually an early version of part of a book currently under preparation, and is offered as such as a gift accompanying this tribute. The first part of the paper begins with a reflection on the expression ‘informal sector’ (for long in current usage) and others still being used, as well on the validity of the formal/informal dicotomy as an analytical instrument, and proceeds by presenting examples of the differences between these two sectors (Table I), their inter-relationships, the existence of hybrid forms and some data on the importance and expansion of the informal sector, which is responsible for ensuring the livelihood of most city inhabitants. The second part focuses on the myriad activities and small-scale individual, family and even ‘firm-like’ businesses and trades that bring the streets and markets to life. Street hawkers and producers, among whom the women play a central role, predominate, many of whom are newcomers to the city that have just arrived from the countryside, or from abroad in the case of the immigrants (Table II). According to another author (Table III), it is particularly difficult to create a taxonomy of these multiple micro-activities, and to draw a clear-cut distinction between formal and informal activities. In the concluding remarks, attention is drawn to the unquestionable reality, complexity, expansion and importance of the informal sector of the urban economy. Hence the need to study it in the field while bearing in mind its wider context and to regard it as a structural feature rather than a marginal or marginalized phenomenon.

This issue of M/C Journal rejects the association of darkness with immorality. In digital communication, the possibilities of darkness are greater than simple fears of what is hidden in online networks. Instead, new work in an emerging field of “dark social” studies’ consider “dark” as holding the potential for autonomy away from the digital visibilities that pervade economic, political, and surveillance logics of the present age. We shall not be afraid of the dark. We start from a technical rather than moral definition of darkness (Gehl), a definition that conceives of dark spaces as having legitimacies and anonymities against structural surveillance. At the same time, breaking away from techno-centric critiques of the dark allows a humanisation of how dark is embodied and performed at individual and structural levels. Other readings of digitally mediated dark (Fisher and Bolter) suggest tensions between exploitative potentials and deep societal reflection, and the ability for a new dark age (Bridle) to allow us to explore unknown potentials. Together these perspectives allow our authors a way to use dark to question and upend the unresting pressure and acceptance of—and hierarchy given to—the light in aesthetics of power and social transformation. While we reject, however, the reduction of “dark” to “immoral” as we are not blind to “bad actors” lurking in hidden spaces (see Potter, forthcoming). Dark algorithms and their encoded biases shape our online lives. Not everyone has the ability to go off grid or create their own dark networks. Colonial settlerism often hides its brutal logics behind discourses of welfare. And some of us are forced to go dark against our will, as in the case of economies or nations being shut out of communication networks. But above all, the tensions produced in darkness, going dark, and acting dark show the normative powers beyond only focusing on the light. Taken as a whole, the articles in this issue explore the tensions between dark and connected, opting in and opting out, and exposure and retreat. They challenge binaries that reduce our vision to the monochromaticism of dark and light. They explain how the concept of “dark” expands opportunities for existence and persistence beyond datafication. They point to moral, ethical, and pragmatic responses of selves and communities seeking to be/belong in/of the dark. The issue starts with a high-stakes contest: what happens when an entire country is forced to go dark? While the articles in this issue were in review, Australian Facebook users were abruptly introduced to a unique form of darkness when, overnight, all news posts were removed from Facebook. Leaver’s feature article responds to tell the story of how Facebook and Google fought the Australian media law, and nobody won. Simply put, the platforms-cum-infrastructures did not want the government to mandate terms of their payments and business to traditional news organisations, so pulled the plug on Australia. As Leaver points out, Facebook’s cull not only made news media go dark, but in the midst of a pandemic and ongoing bushfires, prevented government agencies from posting and sharing government public health information, weather and wind patterns, and some State Emergency Services information. His article positions darkness on the spectrum from visibility to invisibility and focuses on the complex interplays of who is in control of, or has the power over, visibility. Facebook’s power to darken vital voices in society was unprecedented in Australia, a form of “de-platforming at scale” (Crawford). It seemed that Facebook (and as Leaver explains, Google, to a lesser extent) were using Australia to test platform power and legislative response. The results of this experiment, Leaver argues, was not a dawn of a new dark age—without the misinforming-glare of Facebook (see Cinque in this issue)—but confirmatory evidence of the political economy of national media: News Corp and other large traditional media companies received millions from Facebook and Google in exchange for the latter being exempt from the very law in question. Everyone won, except the Australians looking to experiment and explore alternatives in a new darkness. Scared of the dark, politicians accepted a mutually agreed transfer of ad-revenue from Google and Facebook to large and incumbent media organisations; and with that, hope of exploring a world mediated without the glare of digital incumbents was snuffed out. These agreements, of course, found user privacy, algorithmic biases, and other concerns of computational light out of scope. Playing off the themes of status quo of institutionalised social media companies, Cinque examines how social online spaces (SOS) which are governed by logics of surveillance and datafication embodied in the concept of the “gazing elite” (data aggregators including social media), can prompt anxieties for users regarding data privacy. Her work in the issue particularly observes that anxiety for many users is shaped by this manifestation of the “dark” as it relates to the hidden processes of data capture and processing by the mainstream platforms, surveillant digital objects that are incorporated into the Internet of Things, and “dark” or black boxed automated decisions which censor expression and self-representation. Against this way of conceptualising digital darkness, Cinque argues that dark SOS which use VPNs or the Tor browser to evade monitoring are valuable to users precisely because of their ability to evade the politics of visibility and resist the power of the gazing elite. Continuing away from the ubiquitous and all consuming blue glow of Facebook to more esoteric online communities, Maddox and Heemsbergen use their article to expand a critique on the normative computational logics which define the current information age (based on datafication, tracking, prediction, and surveillance of human socialities). They consider how “digging in the shadows” and “tinkering” with cryptocurrencies in the “dark” is shaping alternative futures based on social, equitable, and reciprocal relations. Their work traces cryptocurrencies—a “community generated technology” made by makers, miners and traders on darknets—from its emergence during a time of global economic upheaval, uncertainty and mistrust in centralised financial systems, through to new generations of cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin that, based on lessons from early cryptocurrencies, are mutating and becoming absorbed into larger economic structures. These themes are explored using an innovative analytical framework considering the “construction, disruption, contention, redirection, and finally absorption of emerging techno-potentials into larger structures”. The authors conclude by arguing that experiments in the dark don’t stay in the dark, but are radical potentials that impact and shape larger social forms. Bradfield and Fredericks take a step back from a focus on potentially arcane online cultures to position dark in an explicit provocation to settler politics’ fears and anxieties. They show how being dark in Australia is embodied and everyday. In doing so, they draw back the veil on the uncontested normality of fear of the dark-as-object. Their article’s examples offer a stark demonstration of how for Indigenous peoples, associations of “dark” fear and danger are built into the structural mechanisms that shape and maintain colonial understandings of Indigenous peoples and their bodies as part of larger power structures. They note activist practices that provoke settlers to confront individuals, communities, and politics that proclaim “I’m not afraid of the Dark” (see Cotes in Bradfield and Fredericks). Drawing on a related embodied refusal of poorly situated connotations of the dark, Hardley considers the embodied ways mobile media have been deployed in the urban night and observes that in darkness, and the night, while vision is obscured and other senses are heightened we also encounter enmeshed cultural relationships of darkness and danger. Drawing on the postphenomenological concept of multistability, Hardley frames engagement with mobile media as a particular kind of body-technology relation in which the same technology can be used by different people in multiple ways, as people assign different meanings to the technology. Presenting empirical research on participants’ night-time mobile media practices, Hardley analyses how users co-opt mobile media functionalities to manage their embodied experiences of the dark. The article highlights how mobile media practices of privacy and isolation in urban spaces can be impacted by geographical location and urban darkness, and are also distinctly gendered. Smith explores how conversations flow across social media platforms and messaging technologies and in and out of sight across the public domain. Darkness is the backstage where backchannel conversations take place outside of public view, in private and parochial spaces, and in the shadow spaces where communication crosses between platforms. This narrative threading view of conversation, which Smith frames as a multiplatform accomplishment, responds to the question held by so many researchers and people trying to interpret what people say in public on social media. Is what we see the tip of an iceberg or just a small blip in the ocean? From Smith’s work we can see that so much happens in the dark, beyond the gaze of the onlooker, where conversational practices move by their own logic. Smith argues that drawing on pre-digital conversational analysis techniques associated with ethnomethodology will illuminate the social logics that structure online interaction and increase our understanding of online sociality forces. Set in the context of merging platforms and the “rise of data”, Lee presents issues that undergird contemporary, globally connected media systems. In translating descriptions of complex systems, the article critically discusses the changing relational quality of “the shadow of hierarchy” and “Platform Power”. The governmental use of private platforms, and the influence it has on power and opportunity for government and civil society is prefigured. The “dark” in this work is lucidly presented as a relationality; an expression of differing values, logics, and (techno)socialities. The author finds and highlights the line between traditional notions of "infrastructure" and the workings of contemporary digital platforms which is becoming increasingly indistinct. Lee concludes by showing how the intersection of platforms with public institutions and infrastructures has moulded society’s light into an evolving and emergent shadow of hierarchy over many domains where there are, as always, those that will have the advantage—and those that do not. Finally, Jethani and Fordyce present an understanding of “data provenance” as a metaphor and method both for analysing data as a social and political artefact. The authors point to the term via an inter-disciplinary history as a way to explain a custodial history of objects. They adroitly argue that in our contemporary communication environment that data is more than just a transact-able commodity. Data is vital—being acquired, shared, interpreted and re-used with significant influence and socio-technical affects. As we see in this article, the key methods that rely on the materiality and subjectivity of data extraction and interpretation are not to be ignored. Not least because they come with ethical challenges as the authors make clear. As an illuminating methodology, “data provenance” offers a narrative for data assets themselves (asking what, when, who, how, and why). In the process, the kinds of valences unearthed as being private, secret, or exclusive reveal aspects of the ‘dark’ (and ‘light’) that is the focus of this issue. References Bridle, James. New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future. London, UK: Verso Books, 2018. Crawford, Kate (katecrawford). “It happened: Facebook just went off the deep end in Australia. They are blocking *all* news content to Australians, and *no* Australian media can post news. This is what showdowns between states and platforms look like. It's deplatforming at scale.” 18 Feb. 2021. 22 Apr. 2021 <https://twitter.com/katecrawford/status/1362149306170368004>. Fisher, Joshua A., and Jay David Bolter. "Ethical Considerations for AR Experiences at Dark Tourism Sites." 2018 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct) (2018): 365-69. Gehl, Robert. Weaving the Dark Web: Legitimacy on Freenet, Tor, and I2p. The Information Society Series. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018. Potter, Martin. “Bad Actors Never Sleep: Content Manipulation on Reddit.” Eds. Toija Cinque, Robert W. Gehl, Luke Heemsbergen, and Alexia Maddox. Continuum Dark Social Special Issue (forthcoming).

By the 12th century, coffee was extensively cultivated in Yemen, and qawha and cahveh, hot beverages made from roast and ground coffee beans, became popular in the Islamic world over the next 300 years. Commercial production of coffee outside Yemen started in Sri Lanka in the 1660s, Java in the 1700s, and Latin America in 1715, and this production has associations with histories of colonial expansion and slavery. Introduced to Europe in the 17th century, coffee was described by Robert Burton in the section of his 1628 Anatomy of Melancholy devoted to medicines as “an intoxicant, a euphoric, a social and physical stimulant, and a digestive aid” (quoted in Weinberg and Bealer xii). Today, more than 400 billion cups of coffee are consumed each year. Coffee is also an ingredient in a series of iconic dishes such as tiramisu and, with chocolate, makes up the classic mocha mix. Coffee production is widespread in tropical and sub-tropical countries and it is the second largest traded world commodity; second only to oil and petroleum. The World Bank estimates that more than 500 million people throughout the world depend on coffee for their livelihoods, and 25 million of these are coffee farmers. Unfortunately, these farmers typically live and work in substandard conditions and receive only a small percentage of the final price that their coffee is sold for. The majority of coffee farmers are women and they face additional challenges, frequently suffering from abuse, neglect, and poverty, and unable to gain economic, social, or political power in either their family’s coffee businesses or their communities. Some farm coffee under enslaved or indentured conditions, although Fair Trade regimes are offering some lessening of inequalities. At the opposite end of the scale, a small, but growing, number of high-end producers market gourmet sustainable coffee from small-scale, environmentally-aware farming operations. For many in the West today, however, coffee is not about the facts of its production; coffee is all about consumption, and is now interwoven into our contemporary cultural and social habits. Caffeine, found in the leaves, seeds, and fruit of the coffee tree, is an addictive psychoactive substance, but has overcome resistance and disapproval around the world and is now unregulated and freely available, without licence. Our gastronomic sophistication is reflected in which coffee, brewing method, and location of consumption is chosen; our fast-paced lifestyles in the range of coffee-to-go options we have; and our capitalist orientation in the business opportunities this popularity has offered to small entrepreneurs and multinational franchise chains alike. Cafés and the meeting, mingling, discussions, and relaxing that occur there while drinking coffee, are a contemporary topic of reflection and scholarship, as are the similarities and differences between the contemporary café and its earlier incarnations, including, of course, the Enlightenment coffee house. As may be expected from a commodity which has such a place in our lives, coffee is represented in many ways in the media—including in advertising, movies, novels, poetry, songs and, of course, in culinary writing, including cookbooks, magazines, and newspapers. There are specialist journals and popular serials dedicated to expounding and exploring the fine grain detail of its production and consumption, and food historians have written multiple biographies of coffee’s place in our world. So ubiquitous, indeed, is coffee, that as a named colour, it popularly features in fashion, interior design, home wares, and other products. This issue of M/C Journal invited contributors to consider coffee from any relevant angle that makes a contribution to our understanding of coffee and its place in culture and/or the media, and the result is a valuable array of illuminating articles from a diverse range of perspectives. It is for this reason that we chose an image of coffee cherries for the front cover of this issue. Co-editor Jill Adams has worked in the coffee industry for over ten years and has a superb collection of coffee images that ranges from farmers in Papua New Guinea to artfully shot compositions of antique coffee brewing equipment. In making our choice, however, we felt that Spencer Franks’s image of ripe coffee cherries at the Skybury Coffee Plantation in Far North Queensland, Australia, encapsulates the “fruitful” nature of the response to our call for articles for this issue. While most are familiar, moreover, with the dark, glossy appearance and other sensual qualities of roasted coffee beans, fewer have any occasion to contemplate just how lovely the coffee tree is as a plant. Each author has utilised the idea of “coffee” as a powerful springboard into a fascinating range of areas, showing just how inseparable coffee is from so many parts of our daily lives—even scholarly enquiry. In our first feature article, Susie Khamis profiles and interrogates the Nespresso brand, and how it points to the growing individualisation of coffee consumption, whereby the social aspect of cafés gives way to a more self-centred consumer experience. This feature valuably contrasts the way Starbucks has marketed itself as a social hub with the Nespresso boutique experience—which as Khamis explains—is not a café, but rather a club, a trademarked, branded space, predicated on highly knowledgeable and, therefore, privileged patrons. Coffee drinking is also associated with both sobriety and hangover cures, with cigarettes, late nights, and music. Our second feature, by Jon Stewart, looks at how coffee has become interwoven into our lives and imaginations through the music that we listen to—from jazz to blues to musical theatre numbers. It examines the influence of coffee as subject for performers and songwriters in three areas: coffee and courtship rituals, the stimulating effects of caffeine, and the politics of coffee consumption, claiming that coffee carries a cultural and musicological significance comparable to that of other drugs and ubiquitous consumer goods that are often more readily associated with popular music. Diana Noyce looks at the short-lived temperance movement in Australia, the opulent architecture of the coffee palaces built in that era, what was actually drunk in them, and their fates as the temperance movement passed into history. Emma Felton lyrically investigates how “going for a coffee” is less about coffee and more about how we connect with others in a mobile world, when flexible work hours are increasingly the norm and more people are living alone than any other period in history. Felton also introducess a theme that other writers also engage with: that the café also plays a role in the development of civil discourse and civility, and plays an important role in the development of cosmopolitan civil societies. Ireland-based Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire surveys Dublin—that tea drinking city—and both the history of coffee houses and the enduring coffee culture it possesses; a coffee culture that seems well assured through a remarkable win for Ireland in the 2008 World Barista Championships. China has also always been strongly associated with tea drinking but Adel Wang introduces readers to the emerging, and unique, café and coffee culture of that country, as well as some of the proprietors who are bringing about this cultural change. Australia, also once a significant consumer of tea, shifted to a preference for coffee over a twenty year period that began with the arrival of American Servicemen in Australia during World War II. Jill Adams looks at the rise of coffee during that time, and the efforts made by the tea industry to halt its market growth. These strong links between tea and coffee are reflected in Duncan Barnes, Danielle Fusco, and Lelia Green’s thought-provoking study of how coffee is marketed in Bangladesh, another tea drinking country. Ray Oldenberg’s influential concept of the “third place” is referred to by many authors in this collection, but Anthony McCosker and Rowan Wilken focus on this idea. By using a study of how Polish composer, Krzysztof Penderecki, worked in his local café from 9 in the morning to noon each day, this article explores the interrelationship of café space, communication, creativity, and materialism. Donna Lee Brien brings us back to the domestic space with her article on how the popular media of cookery books and magazines portray how coffee was used in Australian cooking at mid-century, in the process, tracing how tiramisu triumphed over the trifle. By exploring the currently fashionable practice of “direct trade” between roasters and coffee growers Sophie Sunderland offers a fresh perspective on coffee production by powerfully arguing that feeling (“affect”) is central to the way in which coffee is produced, represented and consumed in Western mass culture. Sunderland thus brings the issue full circle and back to Khamis’s discussion, for there is much feeling mobilised in the marketing of Nespresso. We would like to thank all the contributors and our generous and erudite peer reviewers for their work in the process of putting together this issue. We would also like to specially thank Spencer Franks for permission to use his image of coffee cherries as our cover image. We would lastly like to thank you the general editors of M/C Journal for selecting this theme for the journal this year.References Oldenburg, Ray, ed. Celebrating the Third Place: Inspiring Stories about the “Great Good Places” At the Heart of Our Communities. New York: Marlowe & Company 2001.Weinberg, Bennett Alan, and Bonnie K Bealer. The World of Caffeine. New York and London: Routledge, 2001.