Overviews
28 August 2019
Large-scale farming and environmental sustainability
Overview -Large corporate farms are often accused of having a damaging impact on ecology and contributing heavily to climate change. Industrial farming, in particular livestock farming, is increasingly associated with global warming, soil and water contamination, overproduction of waste and deforestation. However, in recent years, fostered by heavy social...
06 August 2019
Farm size-productivity relationship
Overview -The relationship between farm size and productivity has been a hot topic among agricultural economists over the last decades due to its relevance for the design and implementation of agricultural policies worldwide. Largescaleagriculture.com presents a collection of recent research results on the topic, including the results published in the last...
12 July 2019
Misconduct in agroholdings: unprecedented grain fraud by Agroinvestgroup
Overview -Just as the fuss over the default of a well-known Ukrainian agroholding Mriya faded away, the Ukrainian agribusiness was shaken by another fraud scandal. Having affected 60% of grain market players, both national and international, the issue is believed to be the biggest grain fraud in the history of Ukrainian agriculture. The present article...
16 January 2019
Misconduct in agroholdings. The case of JBS.
Overview -Over the past 20 years, Brazil’s economy has been overshadowed by a number of large corruption scandals that cost it dozens of billions reais and severe reputation losses. Unfortunately, agri-food business has been part of the problem. The present article describes the case of JBS S.A., one of the largest meat manufacturers in the world.
JBS's rise...
07 January 2019
Why agroholdings go bankrupt. The case of Razgulay
Overview -Russia is one of the countries where large agroholdings face financial problems quite often. The list of the companies that have recently failed to fulfill their financial obligations includes Evrodon, Belaya Ptica, Pava and a number of other agroholdings. Our previous investigations of agroholdings’ bankruptcies in a number of countries revealed...
23 November 2018
Why agroholdings go bankrupt. The case of Mriya
Overview -Even if financial problems among large farming corporations are less frequent than those among smaller farms, they attract much more public attention due to the negative externalities they may cause. Alibi and KazExportAstyk in Kazakhstan, Belaya Ptitsa and Evrodon in Russia, Sintal Agriculture and Agroton in Ukraine, Pili in Uruguay, Clealco in...
16 November 2018
Why agroholdings go bankrupt. The case of Ivolga
Overview -Largescaleagriculture.com starts a series of publications on financial distress in big agricultural companies based on evidences from a number of countries. The financial problems of some of the largest Kazakhstan-based agroholdings Alibi, Ivolga, KazExportAstyk and Atameken-Agro have recently become a well-known fact due to a wide coverage in loc...
26 June 2018
Social cook book: the CSR recipes of agroholdings
Overview -Large agricultural companies interact with tens of thousands of stakeholders as their operations are located in hundreds of communities. How do these companies address their stakeholders? An example from Ukraine, published on agroportal.ua, provides some answers to this question.
18 June 2018
International Financial Institutions (IFIs): How much money do agroholdings need? More!
Overview -International financial institutions (IFIs) play an important role in the capital formation of large agroholdings. In order to expand their businesses, agroholdings conclude many loan agreements with various IFIs every year. This allows agricultural companies to build new production facilities, invest in new technologies and expand their land operations. On the other hand, such activities are often criticized in Western countries, because IFIs get their funding predominantly from Western taxpayers.
31 December 2017
What is an agroholding?
Overview -The rapid development of large farming structures in transition and emerging market economies not only challenges the traditional views on production organization, but also confuses the research community with respect to the very definition of an object of inquiry.
