Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2007
Abstract
Urbanization and an increasingly globalized food system cause growing physical and psychological distances between producers and customers. Alternative distribution initiatives with direct sale to local customers are emerging. This paper reports results of two surveys, one from producers and one from customers, in the newly introduced Norwegian farmers market system. The main aim of the research was to examine attitudes toward local foods and evaluate the potential of this new marketing channel to reduce the distances between farmers and consumers. Results show that producers were more concerned than customers regarding knowledge on how food was produced, and locally marketed, although customers were also interested in these issues. Both groups regarded as to how food was produced to be more important than where it was produced. Producers were more interested in giving customers information on agriculture than customers were in receiving this information. The attitudes toward food differed between respondents of larger urban cities and smaller cities in Norway. Producers traveled a longer distance (average 79 km) than customers (average 14 km) to come to the markets, but traveling distance differed substantially among the sites owing to market location, number of local farmers and small-scale local processors, and product diversity. Results suggest that the farmers markets have potential to reduce both physical and social distances between producers and consumers, and thereby contribute to the sustainability of local food production. Understanding farmer and consumer attitudes can contribute to organization and promotion of farmers markets in Norway and elsewhere. doi:10.1300/J064v30n04_06.
2004
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
2000
Abstract
Agriculture in Latvia has been going through major reforms since 1991. State farm ownership exists only in a negligible quantity only for research and training purposes and most of the land has been returned to its previous owners, or their descendants, from the times before collectivization. During the Soviet period a number of collective farms were established. Most of these still exist, but the legal form has been changed and they operate on private owned land. Also new ones have been formed. As a result of the agricultural reforms, the accounting, tax and statistical systems that had been established in the old structure were no longer applicable. An urgent need thus arose for the development of new systems for the large number of new family farms. NILF became involved in this work on initiative of the Agricultural University of Norway (NLH), which at that point was cooperating with the Latvian Agricultural University, and was already planning several projects in Latvia in 1993. In cooperation with the Latvian State Institute of Agrarian Economics (LVAEI), NILF was to assist in the development of systems for collecting and making use of financial data for individual farm management and the development of Latvian agricultural policy. The project received financial support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Program for Cooperation with Central and Eastern Europe, and got under way in the summer of 1996. A project unit was established within LVAEI, which was responsible for all work regarding farm statistics. This included the establishment of farm statistics, adaptation to the European Union's Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN), as well as systems for farm planning. The adaptation to FADN received some support and training assistance from a Danish project. NILF's project constituted the major part of the LVAEI project unit, both with regard to work load and funding. From the Norwegian point of view, the cooperation with the Latvian project unit functioned extremely well, and the unit has continued following the completion of the project. [...]
1999
Abstract
This report was written in connection with the preparations of the Norwegian authorities for the new round of WTO negotiations on further liberalization of world trade. The report surveys the natural conditions in Australia, France, New Zealand, Norway and the USA, and studies their influence on agriculture, e.g., on farm size, farmland distribution, types of production and production costs. However, it is not easy to limit the analysis to merely the natural conditions for farming, since a number of other political, legal, economic, historic and cultural factors also determine the conditions for agriculture in a country. The report includes agroclimatic data such as length of growing-season, temperature sums, mean temperatures and mean precipitation. Not surprisingly, the climate in Australia and New Zealand is significantly different from the climate in Norway. In these two countries, low temperatures are not a major growth-limiting factor, as they are in (parts of) France, Norway and the USA. Especially in Australia, growth is mainly limited by too high temperatures, excessive radiation, evaporation and lack of rainfall. [...]
Abstract
This report focuses on agriculture and its impacts in rural areas. Agriculture is an important activity in the Norwegian periphery, directly and indirectly. A deregulation of agriculture will most probably have negative impacts on agricultural production and employment. This, in turn, will have negative impacts on other sectors. Since agriculture is overrepresented in the periphery, and there are few alternative sources of employment, reduced activity in agricultural can lead to increased centralisation. This can be a problem since the relatively low population densities already imply a danger of depopulation in the periphery. Some motivations for regulating agriculture are based on the sector's importance in the periphery. Regulations are also motivated by other facts. It is very difficult to distinguish precisely between rurality and other motivations. However, part of the motivation is agricultural production itself, or aims that can be deducted from production. Distribution of income is an example of this. From a theoretical point of view, subsidies should, in order to be as efficient as possible, be directed directly towards the problems they are meant to cure. If the aim for granting agricultural support is rural development and not agricultural production, then it is better to grant subsidies that do not depend upon production. Rural development (RD) can be thought of as complementary to agricultural production (AP): (*) RD = f(AP), f'(AP) > 0 This means that you get more RD if AP increases, and less RD if AP decreases. By subsidising AP, you will automatically get more RD. The function (*) does not, however, say anything about the efficiency of subsiding AP for gaining RD, compared to using the same amount of subsidies directly at gaining RD. The function does not describe whether subsidies that are production dependent are preferable to non-production subsidies from a rural development point of view. Using the function (*) and the fact that the secondary effects of reducing agricultural subsidies may be substantial in the peripheries, one may argue, however, that agriculture is important and that agricultural production is an essential industry for rural development. We would also like to underline the fact that agricultural has several non-food impacts and that multifunctionality is much more than rural development. It is especially difficult to distinguish between «rural development» and «cultural landscape». The relationship between them should probably be discussed further.
1997
Abstract
No abstract has been registered