Steven A. Wolf

Incentive Instruments in Fruit and Vegetable Contracts: Input Control, Monitoring, Measuring, and Price Risk

This article examines the structure of contractual relations between growers and first handlers in California fruit and vegetable markets. Evidence on existing structures is collected from on-site interviews and from a small mail survey of market intermediaries who contract with independent growers. Four generic instruments are identified—input control, field visits, quality measurement, and residual price risk—which are used to coordinate relations between growers and first handlers and which help to alleviate information asymmetries and align incentives between contracting parties. Drawing from our interviews and survey, we offer examples of how each of these instruments are employed.

Policing Mechanisms in Agricultural Contracts

In this paper we focus on mechanisms of coordination in agricultural contracts. Our approach is intended to advance understanding of social relations of production and distribution of power in agrofood systems. Through an analysis of contracts between farmers and intermediaries (e.g., processors, shippers, consignment agents) for California fruits and vegetables, we identify three functions of contracts: they help to coordinate production, they provide incentives (and penalties) to induce particular behaviors, and they allow farmers and intermediaries to share risk. These functions are implemented via four policing instruments: input control, monitoring, quality measurement, and revenue sharing. The instruments are employed by intermediaries to mitigate “blind spots” in contracts and to control farmers actions and the quality of their output. This mechanism design approach is complemented by a sociologically oriented analysis emphasizing the embeddedness of economic institutions. We problematize the stylized fashion in which the concept of authority has been treated in the contract farming literature, and propose an alternative approach to studying new organizational forms and divisions of labor among farmers and intermediaries.

Consumption of Economic Information in Agriculture

We develop a model of decision makers demand for agricultural economic information services. This modeltreats choice of externaldecision-support services as a function of actors assessment of how alternative investments in information complement their internal competencies. Data from a survey in four commodity systems are used to evaluate hypotheses as to how human capital, and functional role of actors in commodity systems affect demand for variously formatted information. By focusing on three axes of heterogeneity—diversity among decision makers, information service providers, and information—we are able to identify key structuraland functional relationships in agricultural economic information systems. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.

Between data and decisions: the organization of agricultural economic information systems

Abstract In the current political economic environment there is pressure to reduce and reorient public agency involvement in agricultural economic research and information services. Efforts to evaluate the effectiveness of public investments and enhance sectoral coherence through exploitation of institutional complementarity are constrained by weak understanding of how economic information is produced, processed and circulated. In this paper, we locate the centers of analytic competence and analyze supply of agricultural economic advisory services through development of an information accounting framework. We focus on the relative contributions of public agencies, commercial firms, collective organizations, and informal networks in order to identify organizational structures and institutional arrangements of coordination in the agricultural economy. The observed division of labor in information systems reflects the heterogeneous distribution and strategic choices of actors with respect to internal analytic competencies. Decision makers in agricultural businesses are heavily dependent on the services of a diverse range of intermediaries who perform information translation and customization functions. These intermediaries rely heavily on largely, but not exclusively, publicly supplied data and information inputs. This strongly linear aspect of agricultural economic information systems is identified as a component subsystem within the larger and more highly interconnected system of innovation. The dominant role of public agencies in economic information systems suggests that they currently perform highly valuable coordinating functions in agriculture. While commercial and collective organizations make important contributions and could be mobilized to assume broader responsibility, there are likely to be limitations to substitutability based on the classic (but still fully relevant) problem of private underinvestment in information.

Between Incentives and Action: A Pilot Study of Biodiversity Conservation Competencies for Multifunctional Forest Management in Finland

We investigate processes through which organizations engaged in natural resource management pursue conservation innovations—that is, create capabilities that allow them to produce new goods and services or produce goods and services in ways that reduce environmental degradation. Through an accounting of organizational competencies, we conduct an exploratory analysis of investments Finnish forest management service providers—public agencies, private firms, and civil society actors—have made to address demand for biodiversity conservation. From the perspective of theory and method, our pilot study points to opportunities to test, and perhaps advance, hypothesized tendencies toward environmental improvement through assessment of material practices and organizational strategies. This materialist approach is applicable to analysis at the level of organizations, sectors and territories. From an empirical perspective, the research highlights the contemporary coevolution of incentives and patterns of organizational behavior in Finnish forestry in response to social demand for biodiversity conservation and multifunctional landscapes.

Cognitive Representations and Institutional Hybridity in Agrofood Innovation

Product differentiation has emerged as a central dynamic in contemporary agrofood systems. Departure from the mode of standardization emblematic of agrofood modernization raises questions about future technical trajectories and the ways in which learning will be sustained. This article examines two innovation trajectories: (1) the rapid coupling of biotechnologies and information technologies to yield products differentiated by constituent components—a model based on a cognitive logic of decomposition/ recomposition—and (2) the proliferation of product networks that mobilize distinctive, localized resources to create complete identities—a model based on a cognitive logic of identity. The article analyzes the information structures—institutional mechanisms that support information exchange and learning—in each of these opposed development paradigms. We find that knowledge creation under each of the logics occurs through mechanisms not recognized within the respective paradigms. On this basis, we derive institutional hybridity as a fundamental resource in systems of innovation.

Recasting alternative agriculture as a management model: The value of adept scaling

Abstract This paper identifies the significance of scale considerations as applied to agricultural resource management. Scaling is the act of defining the spatiotemporal level or levels of interest when attempting problem solving. A goal commonly proposed by the diverse interests working toward an alternative agriculture is sustainability. To date, advocates of sustainability have failed to scale meaningfully both their critique of conventional agriculture and the alternatives they represent. Because sustainability is inherently sensitive to changes in analytic context (i.e., is scale-relative), in the absence of explicit scaling, sustainability is unworkable as a measure of system performance. The importance of scale as applied to the concept of sustainability in hierarchical systems has been noted (Lowrance et al., 1986; Am. J. Altern. Agric., 1: 169–173), however, the implications of this finding have not been confronted in the subsequent literature. Going beyond Lowrance et al. (1986), this paper describes the error that accompanies improperly scaled assessment of agricultural sustainability, and identifies two important considerations that emerge through explicit scaling: (1) the necessity of consistent and timely integration of local information into upper-level decision-making, and (2) the necessity of recognizing the scalar level of the downside of resource allocation trade-offs and addressing them accordingly. The first of these considerations suggests the need for agricultural systems that are resilient to collapse from unpredictable and potentially fundamental disturbance. Through incorporation of local information, it is possible to maintain coherent strategies aimed at upper-level objectives (e.g., biodiversity conservation) while supporting the integrity of lower-level sub-systems (e.g., community economic vitality). The second consideration that arises from explicit scaling indicates the value of developing systems which are buffered against political paralysis caused by negative impacts of resource allocation decisions. Victims, or losers, result from allocation and reallocation functions. These individuals and/or institutions must be addressed. Recent enthusiasm regarding win-win scenarios in many cases is buoyed by scaling error. Explicit recognition of the implications of necessary trade-offs, both positive and negative, promotes the development of mechanisms to support losers. Failure to confront the fact that losers are consistently produced exaggerates the negative impact they have on system performance. We define holistic management as identifying, assimilating, and acting on information in a manner consonant with the contextual spatiotemporal scale of the problem at hand. The fundamental challenge facing agriculture is integration of multiple considerations across levels in the system. Explicitly scaled analysis and action in a holistic setting is proposed as a means by which alternative agriculture can respond to this challenge.

The Political Economy of Precision Farming

Precision farming (also known as variable-rate, prescription, site-specific, or soil-specific farming) is rapidly becoming the most touted of emerging technologies in American agriculture. Scarcely an issue of the mainstream agricultural print media is now published without at least some mention of the current applications of and new developments in precision farming. Precision farming-application of georeferencing technology [i.e., global positioning satellite system (GPS)] for purposes of data recording and navigational control for field operations-is increasingly hailed as a means of increasing production efficiency while simultaneously mitigating agricultural pollution. The claims surrounding precision farming-that capitalizing on extant agroecological heterogeneity, through a just-enough and just-in-time approach, will produce economic and environmental benefits simultaneously-are clearly very appealing. Further, we think it is very likely that precision farming and its variants will play a growing role in the restructuring of agricultural practices over the next several decades.

Goal attainment in urban ecology research: A bibliometric review 1975–2004

AbstractWe analyze a core literature of urban ecology (all articles published in Urban Ecology and Urban Ecosystems from 1975–2004, n = 261) to support a reflexive analysis of the field. We structure this critical analysis based on criteria derived from programmatic statements made by scientific societies, research funding organizations and academic institutions regarding what urban ecology should be. Specifically, we assess the extent to which the literature reflects, and has evolved to reflect, a commitment tonstrengthen and expand the discipline of ecologycreate a transdisciplinary enterprise, andcontribute to social and ecological wellbeing through applied research and policy engagement.Findings indicate that the literature strongly reflects these commitments, as these three tenets usefully describe the field and its evolution. We do, however, identify a tendency over time toward a more strictly disciplinary orientation. Ecological science is increasingly dominant and threatens to crowd out other scientific perspectives. This trend suggests that the field is maturing in the institutional sense, but perhaps at the cost of intellectual diversity, which many believe to be the basis of innovative solutions.

Principles of risk management service relations in agriculture

Abstract The economic literature on risk has explained heterogeneity of behavior among agents facing uncertainty through curvature of a utility function. Many other factors, however, may account for heterogeneous decisions by actors in the same market. First, decision-makers are differentiated on the basis of their access to specific information sources. Secondly, even when information sources are available to all, the value derived by actors from the information will depend on the analytic capacity of the decision-maker to make use of specifically formatted information. We use the results of a survey to demonstrate heterogeneity in informational resources. Further, we identify the ways in which this variance is reflected in the roles and relationships of various actors (e.g. USDA, extension, private consultants, farmers) within agricultural economic information networks. We conclude that research and policy efforts to study or mitigate risk should take into account the relationship between information format and actors’ analytic capabilities.