Browsing by Author "Shadbolt NM"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Factors influencing the Dairy Trade from New Zealand
    (International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, 24/08/2016) Shadbolt NM; Apparao D
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    Resilience, risk and entrepreneurship
    (International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, 1/05/2016) Shadbolt NM; Olubode-Awosola F
    Farmers worldwide face an increasingly turbulent environment. Successful farmers are those that adapt to shifts in the environment to capture the opportunities from such disturbance and outperform those who do not adapt. Such farmers, the literature would suggest, are entrepreneurs, catalysts for change with a risk-taking propensity. The paper presents analysis of farmers grouped with respect to their attitude to risk. It identifies that those farmers that are risk seekers would be more accurately described as gamblers based on their performance over six years of volatility. The most successful group of farmers were risk neutral, had a strong business focus and skills, managing quite high levels of debt to good effect. They had a positive attitude to change and an ability to successfully adapt to changing conditions so best fit the broader definition of entrepreneur. The risk averse group carried less debt and also outperformed the risk seeking group with strong cash results and retained earnings. Farmers cannot be assumed to be successful catalysts for change just from their attitude to risk and a belief in their ability to manage risk; instead they are those whose results prove that they are successfully taking risks, have strong business skills and run efficient farm businesses.
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    Strategy implementation literature review
    (AgriOne, 2016-03-01) Siddique MI; Shadbolt NM
    The purpose of the Dairy Farm Systems for the Future project is to explore how to identify and design farming systems best suited to the changing environment and farmer circumstances. The approach adopted has been to: • Develop a better understanding by farmers, industry and researchers of possible, plausible future scenarios for dairying • Design and analyse potential farm system alternatives for each of the scenarios • Define a rigorous approach for evaluating farming systems. • Build greater industry capability and collaboration in farm system design & analysis. This is supported by literature reviews on scenario analysis, strategy implementation and modelling approaches for system design and analysis. The first, obviously, will inform the scenario analysis process, provide comparisons of similar studies and examples of what best to do with its outputs; the third is to ensure the most up-to-date methods are used in the modelling based on a comprehensive understanding of previous farm system modelling research. The strategy implementation review, this report, is based on the recognition that best strategy is only ever realised if implemented effectively. It is intended that the farm system design will also include the pathway of how the current system will evolve and the impact of this evolution on both the farm and the wider regional/national stakeholders. This description of the implementation of each strategy will be assisted by the frameworks and guidelines developed in this literature review. The key points when examining the scenarios that have been developed is that they are all plausible, they all represent a significant shift from the status quo, they all involve significant investment and change and that none of these is easy. There are significant strategic risks identified for each scenario so the process of designing and modelling farm systems for each of these scenarios need to take these into account. Strategy formulation of ‘dairy farm systems for the future’ for each scenario will clearly identify the options available and quantify their outcomes, therefore providing useful information for farmers and other stakeholders faced with each situation. While there is much research in both business and farm management literature on strategy formulation and many tools developed to assist in the process, the field of strategy implementation is less well researched. This literature review identifies a range of research, mostly from the business literature, in which academics have developed strategy implementation frameworks and models, some theoretical, some conceptual and tested empirically, others created from empirical work. A number of frameworks and recommendations have evolved since the early 1980s as documented chronologically in this report. The commercial world, for the most part, echoes these recommendations in the ‘best practice’ section of the review. The tool that is best documented both in the business and the farm management literature for strategy implementation is the balanced scorecard; this tool is explored in this review and recommended for use in the ‘dairy farm systems for the future’ design.