Academic literature on the topic 'Toledo Farmers' Market'

The dairy business is characterized by generally low profit margins due to a very competitive market environment. Dairy farmers and milk processing companies, therefore, constantly seek to optimize their technical production processes in pursuit of further cost reductions, e.g. by means of improving herd management, milking and feeding practices. In addition, innovative business strategies may create competitive advantage in response to market conditions. While vertical coordination or even integration have been established successfully in most sectors of animal husbandry including poultry, pork and beef production, this strategy is mostly limited to supplying contracts and input support within the dairy sector. Various organizational models of increasing vertical coordination in dairy production exist, with great variation in terms of operational performance and profitability. Using the example of 3B Agro LTDA’s dairy production located in the municipality of Toledo, Brazil, the case study illustrates the significant efficiency potential that currently exists in the Brazilian dairy supply chain. The prevalence of short-term contractual commitments and an influential role of independent intermediaries give room to considerable opportunism of market participants, various principal-agent problems and severe issues regarding milk quality. The case study illustrates that, vertical coordination can increase control and efficiency along the supply chain. It also points out the importance of strong managerial competencies and capabilities of dairy farm managers in order to exploit fully the efficiency potential provided by vertical coordination.

This case study examines how smallholder coffee producers can overcome the economic and environmental challenges from dominant production structures of agrochemical application and the sale of unprocessed beans at low, market-determined prices. This study is guided by the questions posed by local coffee farmers themselves: How can one successfully shift away from wasteful and harmful practices to those that support the health of the family, community, and environment? We track how El Toledo Coffee Farm in Costa Rica has harnessed natural systems and knowledge sharing, facilitated by international travel to transform challenges into opportunities. Here, we highlight how this family-run coffee farm has (1) implemented agroecological methods, (2) harnessed economic benefits of processing organic coffee and developing innovative products from coffee fruits, and (3) examine psychological factors that have made these transformations possible. By examining the development of integrated coffee production from three distinct academic perspectives, we found that mental flexibility and receptiveness to new ideas, combined with an appreciation of sustainable, traditional practices and values, have spawned various beneficial agroecological practices. These ideas and practices were often initiated by interactions with visitors to the farm, supporting the idea that globalization can foster sustainable food systems and promote collective ecological action through knowledge transfer and shared concern for local environments and communities. The mentality of embracing challenges as opportunities to invest in healthy soils and agroforestry and expand their business model by offering tours and varied products replicates ecological resilience attained through diversity.

Back in the halcyon days of 1951, when the United States was entering its golden years of wealth and power and proclaiming that this was the American Century, there seemed no limit to what we could do with nature. Were some climates too hot? We could air-condition them. Were some too cold? We could thaw them out or raise tomatoes under glass. Were some too dry? We could, through hydraulic engineering, make them over into a veritable Eden of delights. In that year a Time magazine reporter traveled to the arid West to write about “the endless frontier” being won there by the engineers of the Bureau of Reclamation. They promised to develop enough water to redeem fifty million acres from aridity, enough acres to feed the equivalent of a whole new nation the size of France or Germany. And the engineers were not in the least reluctant to say what pleasure they got out of the work: “We enjoy pushing rivers around,” they told the reporter. Whether the pushing had any real direction, any clear sense of ends, was secondary; they (and by extension, we Americans) were a people who enjoyed dominating nature and we would look for rationales later. In a spirit of what the magazine called “engineering ecstasy,” almost every river in the western part of the country came under control and was made to raise alfalfa, fruit, and cotton. Our agricultural base shifted abruptly westward into the desert, and eastern and midwestern farmers suffered substantial damage to their fortunes. By the last agricultural census, the West counted over 45 million irrigated acres, producing one-fourth of the nation’s annual farm market sales. Though it irrigated only a small percentage of that acreage, the Bureau of Reclamation was unexcelled among water pushers for ambition and scale. It was the Bureau that had erected some of the biggest dams ever: Hoover, Grand Coulee, Shasta, Glen Canyon, Teton, Navajo, Flaming Gorge, etc., the clearest, brightest expressions we had of our national drive to conquer the land. But the big dams were more than that.