The Small Farmer-Tuskegee University-Walmart Project: Observations of the Steps within Commercial Supply

Barrett Vaughan, Miles D. Robinson, Audrey Zeigler, George X. Hunter, Gertrude Wall and John Brown

Professional Agricultural Workers Journal (PAWJ), 2017, vol. 04, issue 2

Abstract: Observations of the various efforts necessary in an initiative, the Small Farmer-Tuskegee University-Walmart Project, to assist small farmers to comply with produce industry standards and supply produce to a major retailer over a six-year period were documented through an illustrative case study. The observations were taken from meetings with commercial buyers and farmers, site visits to processing centers and corporate farms, conference calls, and, mainly, from the authors’ “hands-on” participation with the functioning and preservation of this initiative. Consequently, these observations were organized into a framework of criteria that must be successively satisfied to be able to supply produce commercially. These criteria were capacity, capability, quality, food safety, consistency, sustainability, and market ability. A key finding was that for small farmers to meet these criteria, they required organization and support. It was concluded that although the effort was successful, the information gained through the effort was perhaps more valuable.

Keywords: Agribusiness; Crop Production/Industries; Farm Management; Industrial Organization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/262310/files/T ... t_%20Observation.pdf (application/pdf)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/262310/files/T ... n.pdf?subformat=pdfa (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:pawjal:262310

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.262310

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Professional Agricultural Workers Journal (PAWJ) from Professional Agricultural Workers Conference
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().