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This piglix contains articles or sub-piglix about Food industry
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Agricultural economics


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Agricultural economics or agronomics is an applied field of economics concerned with the application of economic theory in optimizing the production and distribution of food and fibre—a discipline known as agronomics. Agronomics was a branch of economics that specifically dealt with land usage. It focused on maximizing the crop yield while maintaining a good soil ecosystem. Throughout the 20th century the discipline expanded and the current scope of the discipline is much broader. Agricultural economics today includes a variety of applied areas, having considerable overlap with conventional economics. Agricultural economists have made substantial contributions to research in economics, econometrics, development economics, and environmental economics. Agricultural economics influences food policy, agricultural policy, and environmental policy.

Economics has been defined as the study of resource allocation under scarcity. Agronomics, or the application of economic methods to optimizing the decisions made by agricultural producers, grew to prominence around the turn of the 20th century. The field of agricultural economics can be traced out to works on land economics. Henry Charles Taylor was the greatest contributor with the establishment of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Wisconsin in 1909.

Another contributor, 1979 Nobel Economics Prize winner Theodore Schultz, was among the first to examine development economics as a problem related directly to agriculture. Schultz was also instrumental in establishing econometrics as a tool for use in analyzing agricultural economics empirically; he noted in his landmark 1956 article that agricultural supply analysis is rooted in "shifting sand", implying that it was and is simply not being done correctly.



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Wikipedia
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Agricultural marketing


Agricultural marketing covers the services involved in moving an agricultural product from the farm to the consumer. Numerous interconnected activities are involved in doing this, such as planning production, growing and harvesting, grading, packing, transport, storage, agro- and food processing, distribution, advertising and sale. Some definitions would even include “the acts of buying supplies, renting equipment, (and) paying labor", arguing that marketing is everything a business does.

In the United States the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is a division of USDA and has programs for cotton, dairy, fruit and vegetable, livestock and seed, poultry, and tobacco. These programs provide testing, standardization, grading and market news services and oversee marketing agreements and orders, administer research and promotion programs, and purchase commodities for federal food programs. The AMS also enforces certain federal laws. USDA also provides support to the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center at Iowa State University] and to Penn State University.

In the United Kingdom, support for marketing of some commodities was provided before and after the Second World War by boards such as the Milk Marketing Board and the Egg Marketing Board. These boards were closed down in the 1970s. As a colonial power, Britain established marketing boards in many countries, particularly in Africa. Some continue to exist although many were closed down at the time of the introduction of structural adjustment measures in the 1990s.

In recent years, several developing countries have established government-sponsored marketing or agribusiness units. South Africa, for example, started the National Agricultural Marketing Council (NAMC) as a response to the deregulation of the agriculture industry and closure of marketing boards in the country. India has the long-established National Institute of Agricultural Marketing. These are primarily research and policy organizations, but other agencies provide facilitating services for marketing channels, such as the provision of infrastructure, market information and documentation support. Examples include the National Agricultural Marketing Development Corporation (NAMDEVCO) in Trinidad and Tobago and the New Guyana Marketing Corporation.



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Wikipedia
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Adulterant


An adulterant is a pejorative term for a substance found within other substances such as food, fuels or chemicals even though it is not allowed for legal or other reasons.

It will not normally be present in any specification or declared contents of the substance, and may not be legally allowed. The addition of adulterants is called adulteration. The most common reason for adulteration is the use by manufacturers of undeclared materials that are cheaper than the correct and declared ones. The adulterants may be harmful, or reduce the potency of the product, or they may be harmless.

The term "contamination" is usually used for the inclusion of unwanted substances due to accident or negligence rather than intent, and also for the introduction of unwanted substances after the product has been made. Adulteration therefore implies that the adulterant was introduced deliberately in the initial manufacturing process, or sometimes that it was present in the raw materials and should have been removed, but was not.

An adulterant is distinct from, for example, permitted food additives. There can be a fine line between adulterant and additive; chicory may be added to coffee to reduce the cost or achieve a desired flavour—this is adulteration if not declared, but may be stated on the label. Chalk was often added to bread flour; this reduces the cost and increases whiteness, but the calcium actually confers health benefits, and in modern bread a little chalk may be included as an additive for this reason.

In wartime adulterants have been added to make foodstuffs "go further" and prevent shortages. The German word ersatz is widely recognised from such practices during WW2. Such adulteration was sometimes deliberately hidden from the population to prevent loss of morale and propaganda reasons. Some goods considered luxurious in the Communist Bloc such as coffee were adulterated to make them affordable to the general population.

Adulterants added to reduce the amount of expensive product in illicit drugs are called cutting agents. Deliberate addition of toxic adulterants to food or other products for human consumption is poisoning.



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Wikipedia
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Agricultural value chain


The agricultural value chain concept has been used since the beginning of the millennium, primarily by those working in agricultural development in developing countries. Although there is no universally accepted definition of the term, it normally refers to the whole range of goods and services necessary for an agricultural product to move from the farm to the final customer or consumer.

The term value chain was first popularized in a book published in 1985 by Michael Porter, who used it to illustrate how companies could achieve what he called “competitive advantage” by adding value within their organization. Subsequently the term was adopted for agricultural development purposes and has now become very much in vogue among those working in this field, with an increasing number of bilateral and multilateral aid organisations using it to guide their development interventions.

At the heart of the agricultural value chain concept is the idea of actors connected along a chain producing and delivering goods to consumers through a sequence of activities. However, this “vertical” chain cannot function in isolation and an important aspect of the value chain approach is that it also considers “horizontal” impacts on the chain, such as input and finance provision, extension support and the general enabling environment. The approach has been found useful, particularly by donors, in that it has resulted in a consideration of all those factors impacting on the ability of farmers to access markets profitably, leading to a broader range of chain interventions. It is used both for upgrading existing chains and for donors to identify market opportunities for small farmers.

There is no commonly agreed definition of what is actually meant by agricultural value chains. Indeed, some agencies are using the term without having a workable definition or definitions and simply redefined ongoing activities as “value chain” work when the term came into vogue. Published definitions include the World Bank’s “the term ‘’value chain’’ describes the full range of value adding activities required to bring a product or service through the different phases of production, including procurement of raw materials and other inputs”,UNIDO’s “actors connected along a chain producing, transforming and bringing goods and services to end-consumers through a sequenced set of activities”, and CIAT’s “a strategic network among a number of business organizations”.



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Wikipedia
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Agriculture


Agriculture is the cultivation and breeding of animals, plants and fungi for food, fiber, biofuel, medicinal plants and other products used to sustain and enhance human life. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the development of civilization. The study of agriculture is known as agricultural science. The history of agriculture dates back thousands of years, and its development has been driven and defined by greatly different climates, cultures, and technologies. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture farming has become the dominant agricultural methodology.

Modern agronomy, plant breeding, agrochemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers, and technological developments have in many cases sharply increased yields from cultivation, but at the same time have caused widespread ecological damage and negative human health effects. Selective breeding and modern practices in animal husbandry have similarly increased the output of meat, but have raised concerns about animal welfare and the health effects of the antibiotics, growth hormones, and other chemicals commonly used in industrial meat production. Genetically modified organisms are an increasing component of agriculture, although they are banned in several countries. Agricultural food production and water management are increasingly becoming global issues that are fostering debate on a number of fronts. Significant degradation of land and water resources, including the depletion of aquifers, has been observed in recent decades, and the effects of global warming on agriculture and of agriculture on global warming are still not fully understood.



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Wikipedia
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Agriculture in the United Kingdom


Agriculture in the United Kingdom uses 69% of the country's land area, employs 1.5% of its workforce (476,000 people) and contributes 0.62% of its gross value added (£9.9 billion). The UK produces less than 60% of the food it eats. Although agricultural activity occurs in most rural locations, it is concentrated in East Anglia (crops) and the South West (livestock). Of the 212,000 farm holdings, there is a wide variation in size from under 20 to over 100 hectares.

Despite skilled farmers, high technology, fertile soil and subsidies, farm earnings are relatively low, mainly due to low prices at the farm gate. Low earnings, high land prices and a shortage of let farmland discourage young people from joining the industry. The average age of the British farm holder is now 59.

Recently there have been moves towards organic farming in an attempt to sustain profits, and many farmers supplement their income by diversifying activities away from pure agriculture. Biofuels present new opportunities for farmers against a background of rising fears about fossil fuel prices, energy security, and climate change. There is increasing awareness that farmers have an important role to play as custodians of the British countryside and wildlife.

The total area of agricultural holdings is about 171,000 km2 (43 million acres), or 183,000 km2 including rough grazing land, of which about a third, 64,000 km2 (15.3 million acres) are arable and most of the rest is given over to grassland. During the growing season about half the arable area is devoted to cereal crops, and of the cereal crop area, more than 65% is wheat. There are about 31 million sheep, 10 million cattle, 9.6 million poultry and 4.5 million pigs. These are arranged on about 212,000 holdings, whose average cultivable area is around 54 hectares (130 acres). About 70% of farms are owner-occupied or mostly so (perhaps with individual barns or fields let out), and the remainder are rented to tenant farmers. Farmers represent an ageing population, partly due to low earnings and barriers to entry, and it is increasingly hard to recruit young people into farming. The average farm holder is 59 years old.

British farming is intensive and highly mechanised, but the country is so heavily populated that it cannot supply its own food needs. The UK produces only 59% of the food it consumes. In 2010, it exported £14 billion worth of food, feed and drink, and imported £32.5 billion. The vast majority of imports and exports are with other Western European countries.



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Wikipedia
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Baker Perkins


Worldwide Headquarters:
Paston Parkway, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England

Bread mixing and forming equipment for plant bakeries
Complete lines for biscuits, cookies and crackers
Cooking and depositing lines for confectionery
Traditional and extruded breakfast cereal systems
Extruded and co-extruded snack lines
Extruders for powder coating manufacture

Baker Perkins Ltd is a British engineering company based in Peterborough offering manufacturing and process services to the food industry throughout the world.

The company has its origins with Jacob Perkins (1766-1849), an American inventor who moved to England in 1819 from Massachusetts. His son, Angier March Perkins (1799-1881), founded the firm of A. M. Perkins & Co Ltd to manufacture his inventions. In 1893, the company merged with Werner & Pfleiderer (London) to form Werner, Pfleiderer & Perkins Ltd. In 1904, WP&P moved their manufacturing from London to Westwood, Peterborough. In 1914, owing to pressure over its German-sounding name, the company became Perkins Engineers Ltd. During World War I, the company produced a range of armaments including Ricardo engines for Mark IV tanks. In 1918 it merged with Joseph Baker & Sons Ltd of Willesden to become Joseph Baker Sons & Perkins Ltd and in 1923, Baker Perkins Ltd.

By the time of the merger, Baker and Perkins were well-established names in the bakery, biscuit, confectionery, chocolate and chemical machinery industries. Just as the companies combined, the Bakers bought a factory in Saginaw, Michigan, that for over 60 years was the base for manufacture of food and chemical equipment in North America.

Between the wars, the company manufactured a wide range of machinery including laundry equipment. In 1939, Baker Perkins was asked to take on production of the new twin 6-pounder coast defence gun and also made components for a wide range of other artillery pieces. Post war, Baker Perkins specialised in equipment for the food processing and printing industries.



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Wikipedia
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Biomanufacturing


Biomanufacturing is a type of manufacturing or biotechnology that utilizes biological systems to produce commercially important biomaterials and biomolecules for use in medicines, food and beverage processing, and industrial applications. Biomanufacturing products are recovered from natural sources, such as blood, or from cultures of microbes, animal cells, or plant cells grown in specialized equipment. The cells used during the production may have been naturally occurring or derived using genetic engineering techniques.

There are thousands of biomanufacturing products on the market today. Some examples of general classes are listed below:

A partial listing of unit operations utilized during biomanufacturing includes the following:

Equipment and facility requirements are dictated by the product(s) being manufactured. Process equipment is typically constructed of stainless steel or plastic. Stainless steel equipment can be cleaned and reused. Some plastic equipment is disposed of after a single use.

Products manufactured for medical or food use must be produced in facilities designed and operated according to Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) regulations. Cleanrooms are often required to control the levels of particulates and microorganisms. Sterilization and aseptic processing equipment are required for production of injectable products.


Skilled professionals are required for positions throughout the life cycle of a biomanufacturing product, which includes:

Details for some of these positions are listed in “The Model Employee,” published by the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. In addition, the North Carolina Association for Biomedical Research (NCABR) maintains the website About Bioscience that offers free online videos on various careers.



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Wikipedia
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Ross Erin Butler, Sr.


imageRoss Erin Butler, Sr.

Ross Erin Butler, Sr. (/ˈrɒss ˈɪərɛn ˈbʌtlər/; 16 June 1916 – 3 July 2004) was an officer and original board of directors member of Ore-Ida Foods, and executive board director of Boy Scouts of America's (BSA) Ore-Ida Council for 64 years.

Born near Fairfield, Idaho, Ross was the ninth of eleven children of John and Bertha Thurber Butler. In 1917 the Butlers moved to Acequia, Idaho, and then again in 1922 to Twin Falls, where Ross began his schooling and his business career by selling newspapers at age four. In 1926 the family moved to Hollister, Idaho, where they lived until moving to Eden, Idaho, in 1933. While living in Eden Ross finished high school and met his future wife, a classmate in the class of '35 named Margie Dawn Werry. She was the daughter of Ezra Joseph Werry and Dot Allred and was born 12 October 1916 in Bellevue, Idaho.

Ross and Margie were married in Moscow, Idaho on 19 September 1937. Ross graduated from the University of Idaho with a BS Business degree in 1939. In July 1939 the couple moved to Boise, Idaho, where Ross worked as an accountant for Idaho Power Company. In 1940 he transferred to Vale, Oregon, as their chief clerk.



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Wikipedia
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Blow fill seal


Blow-Fill-Seal (BFS) technology is a manufacturing technique used to produce small, (0.1mL) and large volume, (500mL +) liquid-filled containers. Originally developed in Europe in the 1930s, it was introduced in the United States in the 1960s, but over the last 20 years it has become more prevalent within the pharmaceutical industry and is now widely considered to be the superior form of aseptic processing by various medicine regulatory agencies including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the packaging of pharmaceutical and healthcare products.

The basic concept of BFS is that a container is formed, filled, and sealed in a continuous process without human intervention, in a sterile enclosed area inside a machine. Thus this technology can be used to aseptically manufacture sterile pharmaceutical liquid dosage forms.

The process is multi-stepped: first, pharmaceutical-grade plastic resin is vertically heat extruded through a circular throat to form a hanging tube called the parison. This extruded tube is then enclosed within a two-part mould, and the tube is cut above the mould. The mould is transferred to the filling zone, or sterile filling space, where filling needles (mandrels) are lowered and used to inflate the plastic to form the container within the mould. Following the formation of the container, the mandrel is used to fill the container with liquid. Following filling the mandrels are retracted and a secondary top mould seals the container. All actions take place inside a sterile shrouded chamber inside the machine. The product is then discharged to a non-sterile area for labeling, packaging and distribution.

Blow-fill-seal technology reduces personnel intervention making it a more robust method for the aseptic preparation of sterile pharmaceuticals. BFS is used for the filling of vials for preparations and infusions, eye drops, and inhalation products. Generally the plastic containers are made up of polyethylene and polypropylene. Polypropylene is more commonly used to form containers which are further sterilised by as polypropylene has greater thermostability.



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Wikipedia

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