In order to meet the changing needs and preferences of consumers it will be importantfor Belgian glasshouse growers to change from a production-driven to a customer-drivenstrategy. More than ever, use of information and product innovation become critical factors in the changing competitive...

In Flanders glasshouse vegetables andornamental plants are typically produced at familybusinesses. At this type of businesses the objectives andlong-term firm developments are influenced by the socalled ‘family-firm life cycle’. In many cases the firmshows a life cycle that corresponds with...

In order to meet the changing needs and preferences of consumers it will be important for Belgian glasshouse growers to change from a production-driven to a customer-driven strategy. More than ever, use of information and product innovation become critical factors in the changing competitive...

Current thoughts on CAP changes, e.g. the "Health Check", emphasize the necessity to move away from payments based on historical receipts towards a "flatter rate" system. The aim of current research is to simulate the impact of a flat rate system (equal payments per hectare of cultivated land)...

To explain over- and underuse of available quota, Buysse et al. (2007) have integrated the shadow cost of the quota constraint in a quota flexibility function in a positive mathematical programming model. This method and central hypothesis, formulated and tested for the case of Belgian sugar...

In 2005, 30% of the Flemish farms faced a manure excess, while at aggregated level still 9.7% of the emission rights were unused. This means that, despite the various possibilities, Flemish farmers do not succeed in an effective exchange of manure between farms. In current paper is shown how...

One of the common strategies in rural development programmes is to support the adoption of new on-farm activities. The rationale behind this is that farm diversification is a way to assure an appropriate level of income for the farmers. Through interviews with 49 relatively small farmers, the...

There is a high potential for simultaneously increasing sustainability of the earth system and economic development by removing inefficiencies currently present both at the production input and output side. In this paper a static view on sustainability is employed, by introducing capacity...