Monthly Archives: June 2022

Currently farmers have many tools such as GPS tractors, state-of-the-art combines and self-loading, bailing and packaging systems. In the future farmer John will have autonomous agricultural equipment systems which use artificial intelligence.

Farmer John will merely say; “go check on the irrigation system and make sure the flow rates or 120 gallons per minute, if not adjust them accordingly and then check the east end of the property to make sure it is not flooded, if it is adjust the furrows.”

Sells easy enough doesn’t, sure it does? In fact large corporate farmers will need to maintain such equipment to ensure maximum efficiency. This is not all too different than the robotic factories that now build our cars. Robotic systems using artificial intelligence will be used in those businesses that are insured a strong return on investment in using such equipment.

Today with automatic lawnmowers, automatic pool sweeps and robotic in-home vacuum cleaners, it is obvious where this trend is leading. Currently DARPA has contracted with a company to build autonomous robotic striker vehicles. The commander will simply say; go find the enemy and destroy them. Such a future is in the works, and we all know that government research and military innovation finds its way into the private sector through transfer technologies within four to five years of its use in the military. So, consider this in 2006.

As a very important role of world economy, China has made a tremendous achievement of utilizing foreign investment since the reform and opening up. China’s agriculture began to utilize foreign investment in the end of 70’s, when the reform and opening up just started. Agriculture is one of the earliest industries to utilize foreign investments. The new government has been paying unprecedented attention to agriculture due to its strategic position in the development of economy in China. Then Documents about agriculture has been issued again by the authorities in 2005. Solving the problems facing agriculture, rural areas and farmers has been the most important task for the government. Therefore, under the background that more and more attention has been paid to agriculture, it has both theoretical and practical significance to study how to expand, introduce and utilize foreign-investment effectively and efficiently to promote agricultural modernization, industrialization and internationalization.

This article is composed of four parts to discuss the central topic “Utilization of Foreign Investments in Agriculture of China”.

1. The background, purpose, significance, content and methodology of this study are introduced and an overview of the past and current studies and researches is presented. Besides, the basic theories of agriculture utilizing foreign investments are summarized.

2. The characteristics of agriculture utilizing foreign investments in China are summarized according to its development, status quo and problems existing in the developing process. Moreover, the model of FDI’s contribution to agriculture economic growth is set up to analyze relations between agricultural GDP and FDI in agriculture. Also, we sets up a multivariate regression model of FDI and its influence factors such as the level of agriculture economic development, human capital, the extent of agricultural internationalization and investment climate, etc. The quantitative analysis can provide the data support for government policy.

3. Through introducing the international experiences and lessons of agriculture utilizing investment in developed countries (America and Korea) and in developing countries (Thailand, India, Brazil and Indonesia), some inspirations have been drawn for investment utilization in our agriculture.

4. Based on the theoretical and empirical analysis of the status quo, problems and the influence factors of agriculture utilizing foreign investments, learning its international experiences and lessons, we comes up with some concluding remarks and policy suggestions as follows: agriculture in China should further strengthen the development and exploit market potential; improve agricultural investment climate and upgrade the superiority of introducing foreign capital; intensify high-quality foreign investments introduction and increase the utilizing efficiency; enhance the supervision and control of both domestic and foreign markets as well as establish and consummate rules and regulations.

We could continue for ages and provide you with all sorts of musings on the joyfulness of making those steaming cups of gourmet coffee in the comfort of your own kitchen. We could (and occasionally do!) become poetic on the heavenly aroma that wafts through the air. We could prattle on about the glee of serving a great cup of coffee to family and friends, and taking those few spare moments daily to savor something truly yummy.

We could, but not now. Today we want to give you four solid reasons to buy Lavazza coffee, taking into consideration all the alternative options out there. Hold on tight, it’s going to get real in here. These reasons are not concerning the astonishing experience you get on the wonderful end of a hot cup of coffee. These are facts about Lavazza coffee, how it is grown, prepared and made, that sets the coffee above the ordinary bean. It’s about a tradition of protecting quality, and relentless attention to the particulars of the coffee production experience.

Why Should You Buy Lavazza Coffee?

Like any well-known brand, Lavazza has a particular reputation behind it, one of a long-standing commitment to the coffee drinking experience. This prestige comes from more than 100 years of quality in the business, with constant innovation in production methods and processing procedures.

These four detailed reasons for choosing Lavazza will aid you in understanding why this reputation is well earned.

1. Genuine Quality. Frequently referred to as “Italy’s preferred coffee,” Lavazza has become synonymous with gourmet coffee fineness. The quality has been built up for over more than a century in the business. Part of this tradition includes a stern quality development process that starts exactly at the source, on the coffee farms where the beans are tended. If you want to be confident that the coffee begins with the best beans, you go directly to the source. And this is one critical motivation to buy Lavazza coffee over alternative brands that may possibly source their beans from unknown or unmonitored locations.

2. The Production Plants. When you buy Lavazza coffee, you are buying coffee that’s been processed under carefully controlled conditions at one of the four Italian plants. Two of these plants have been awarded ISO 9001 and ISO 9003 certifications, which means that they scrupulously comply with industry quality standards and maintain excellence in all phases of production. In all cases, the plants operate by incorporating the traditional methods that result in great coffee, while constantly innovating and integrating current technology that enhances the coffee flavor in constantly improving ways.

3. The Heart. A company is only as solid as the people who work in it. When you buy Lavazza coffee, you aid in supporting a company that not only preaches, but lives, social responsibility. For example, they started the Tierra Project, designed to improve living standards in smaller coffee-growing communities in Colombia, Honduras and Peru. Sustainability in agricultural efforts is a vital mission to the company.

4. The Flavor. All right, we could not avoid being poetic on this one. There really is nothing quite like the rich, creamy, robust taste and heady aroma that you will know when you buy Lavazza coffee. Whether you select ground, whole bean or pre-measured, the Lavazza experience is really the elevated water mark of fine Italian coffee.

Ghana, like many countries in the modern world, has an unemployment problem, and the situation is particularly severe in relation to providing jobs for increasing numbers of school leavers. In modern society a job implies employment for seven or eight hours a day, five days a week, a working week being 35 to 40 hours. Many people dislike work, or at least they dislike the jobs they are compelled by economic necessity to undertake. Wouldn’t most people be happier if the hours were shorter and the available work was shared more equitably?

In his book ‘The Affluent Society’ published in 1958, the famous American economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, observed that according to anthropologists, when mankind lived by hunting and gathering, the work needed to sustain life amounted to about four hours a day. Many more hours needed to be worked after the invention of agriculture and it was no doubt during the ensuing long millennia that the idea of life dominated by work became widely accepted. However, Galbraith suggested that with modern labour-saving machines it was likely that the available work, shared out between the able-bodied willing workers, would again be reduced to about four hours a day.

In Ghana, in the last decades of the twentieth century, there was much evidence to suggest that although hours at work were long, the actual work activity filled only a fraction of the time. In Suame Magazine in Kumasi, which provides apprenticeships and employment for thousands of youth, work nominally extended throughout most of the hours of daylight, six days a week. Yet it was observed that much time was spent idly waiting for a customer to bring a job, and when a task was taken in hand there would be one man working and four men watching. Work undertaken in this pleasant and relaxed social environment comes close to Galbraith’s vision of the four hour working day, except that the worker is tied to the workplace throughout the leisure hours.

Within the span of recorded history, and almost within living memory, many Ashantis chose to earn their living as hunters. One of their main hunting grounds was in the south of what is now Brong-Ahafo Region; ahafo meaning hunters in the Twi language. If Galbraith’s anthropologists were correct, these hunters earned their livelihood working about four hours a day, even if they spent longer hours wandering in social intercourse with their companions. According to Galbraith’s theory, it might seem that their descendents working in the informal workshops of Suame Magazine had bypassed the agricultural and industrial revolutions in just a few generations, whereas the craftsmen themselves would claim to have merely preserved their traditional way of working.

Perhaps, part of the answer to providing work for all lies in preserving and extending the traditional social organisation of work. Let everyone who is willing and able, join the team and share the work as it comes to hand. The problem of an equitable sharing of the proceeds is another problem to which even Galbraith could give no final answer, although he made some useful suggestions and warned of the dire consequences if no solution was found.