With rising population and purchasing power, demand for food and changing consumer preferences are building pressure on our resources. Vertical Farming, which means growing food in skyscrapers, might help to solve many of these problems. The purpose of this study was to construct a Vertical Farm and thereof investigate the economic feasibility of it. In a concurrent Engineering Study initiated by DLR Bremen, a farm, 37 floors high, was designed and simulated in Berlin to estimate the cost of production and market potential of this technology. It yields about 3,500 tons of fruits and vegetables and ca. 140 tons of tilapia fillets, 516 times more than expected from a footprint area of 0.25 ha due to stacking and multiple harvests. The investment costs add up to € 200 million, and it requires 80 million litres of water and 3.5 GWh of power per year. The produced food costs between € 3.50 and € 4.00 per kilogram. In view of its feasibility, we estimate a market for about 50 farms in the short term and almost 3000 farms in the long term. To tap the economic, environmental and social benefits of this technology, extensive research is required to optimise the production process.

Purpose -An important characteristic of Fair Trade products is that a fair price is paid to the producer. At the same time the Fair Trade system is accused of being inefficient with respect to the distribution of the price premium paid by consumers along the supply chain. This study aims to focus in particular on consumers' perceptions of fair pricing. Besides, the paper seeks to assess the extent to which consumers' expectations are somehow anchored in or in accordance with reality in Germany in 2007. Design/methodology/approach -To get insights into German consumers' perception of Fair Trade a consumer survey based on face-to-face interviews with n ¼ 484 participants was conducted in 2008. To approach the profit distribution along the Fair Trade coffee chain a web-based market investigation was performed. Findings -One important result is that most of the consumers actually narrow Fair Trade down to the issue of paying fair prices to farmers. The comparison of the efficiency of the Fair Trade system that is requested by the study participants (measured as the share of an additional euro paid for a Fair Trade product) and the point of sale calculations (revealing the percentage of the retail price going to the producer) indicates that for 60 percent of the respondents a calculated share of 50 percent reaching the producer would not be high enough. Results reveal that 10 percent of the respondents require a minimum share of 90 percent of the retail price to reach the producer. A total of 23 percent are satisfied with 80 percent; 60 percent of the respondents want that more than 50 percent of an additional euro spent reaches the producer. Only 4 percent of the participants are willing to accept an efficiency of less than 20 percent. Originality/value -This is the first paper not only investigating how much of the price premium paid by consumers reaches the Fair Trade producers but also delivering insights regarding how much of the price premium paid in the retail store for Fair Trade coffee consumers do request to reach the Fair Trade producer.

This article analyses the relationship between foreign direct investment and the performance of European agribusiness firms. Motivated by the role of heterogeneous firms in new trade theory and using a firm‐level dataset, statistical analyses identify key differences between firms investing in foreign economies and those that do not. A binary choice model quantifies the relationship between firm characteristics and the decision to engage in foreign investment. Size and – less strongly – productivity are greater for multinationals relative to domestic firms. Furthermore, European multinationals are characterised by a larger debt to equity ratio and show lower labour and input costs.

Agricultural Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in Ireland are projected to increase up to 21 Mt CO2eq by 2030 mainly driven by increased dairy cow numbers and increased nitrogen fertiliser use. In response to the growing public awareness of the GHG emissions' environmental impact, the Irish government published the Climate Action Plan in 2019, which identifies the agricultural sector's leading role in reducing GHG emission and increasing carbon removals to achieve the national GHG emission targets by 2030. Marginal Abatement Cost Curves (MACCs) on Irish GHG emissions have projected the total technically feasible mitigation potential for the Irish agriculture, forestry and land use (AFOLU) sector to be sufficient enough to achieve the set targets by 2030. Although these mitigation measures are available and when implemented, would mostly lead to a win-win situation, the voluntary adaptation rate by farmers is low. This study addresses the most significant determinants of voluntary adoption of mitigation measures by systematically examining existing literature on how and to what extent non-price determinants affectthe voluntary adoption rate of technically feasible mitigation measures in the Irish afolu sector. The main identified nonprice determining factors were the degree of farmers' awareness regarding man-made GHG emissions, receiving agrienvironmental advice, implementation costs, profitability and size of farms, land quality and the type of farm enterprise. Integrating the gained results in the former macc analysis enabled us to adopt the implementation rates of the cost-efficient afolu mitigation measures accordingly. The non-price determinants impact the voluntary uptake rate of AFOLU mitigation measures to the extent that the adjusted total Irish AFOLU abatement potential is 47% lower than technically feasible. Considering that 51.6% of the total estimated AFOLU abatement potential in 2030 is offset through Irish forestry, which at current afforestation rate will turn into a net carbon source by 2035, a significant gap occurs to any potential Irish and EU GHG reduction targets. To substantially help bring the nexus between agricultural development and GHG emission targets in Ireland closer together, policy measures, that differentiate between the different type of AFOLU mitigation measures, need to be implemented to enhance the uptake rate of cost-beneficial and cost-effective measures. This would have the potential to reduce the level of agricultural GHG emissions by 2030 in a way that it would converge towards possible EU and Irish GHG emission reduction targets.

The recently published Irish Climate Action Plan has outlined the leading role which agriculture will have to take for Ireland in order to achieve national reduction of GHG emissions.The agricultural sector model CAPRI is used to investigate the impact of an EU-wide agricultural mitigation target on the Irish agriculture sector. Three scenarios developed under the JRC-project EcAMPA2, allowing the endogenous implementation of mitigation technologies, will show the possible impact range that such a policy target could have.It can be inferred that the Irish agriculture sector can achieve the set mitigation target by adapting livestock production systems, resulting in efficiency gains and implementing specific mitigation technologies. Without a mitigation target, changes are marginal, and voluntary adoption will rarely take place. Subsidising the implementation of mitigation technologies can buffer the impact that a mitigation target will have on the Irish agriculture sector, while achieving the set reduction.