Consumer awareness of food safety issues is reshaping the retail food supply chain. For some retailers, public standards for food safety fail to provide the level of assurance demanded by their customers, so many are turning to private standards. Fresh strawberries have been implicated in food...

The importance of the effects of non-tariff barriers on international agricultural trade has become widely recognized and discussed as WTO negotiation has promoted the reduction of tariff rates around the world. Administrative barriers include the high cost of obtaining accurate information on...

The People's Republic of China was established in 1949, ushering in an era of socialism and government centralization. Beginning in 1978, China's economy gradually transitioned from centralization to the transitional and somewhat more privatized society of today. Prior to 1978, government...

Risk and uncertainty over the results of agricultural production were always considered as impediments for the development of agricultural sector and rural areas. Besides traditional weather and market related sources of uncertainty, agriculture in transition economies is facing one more major...

"Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) are aimed at reducing farm level microbial contamination of fresh produce and include both fixed and variable cost components. We empirically analyze three scenarios of voluntary food safety practice adoption and third-party certification in the North American...