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December 2013 (Revised July 2015)
Case

VP Group: Vegpro Grows Beyond Kenya

By: Jose Alvarez and Natalie Kindred

In 2013, Kenyan horticulture producer and exporter VP Group is weighing potential expansion opportunities against the growing risks in its production and export markets. With $121 million in 2012 revenues, VP Group has grown rapidly in recent years by expanding its... View Details

October 2012
Supplement

Aqua Bounty Courseware

By: Lucy White and Steve Burn-Murdoch

Valuation of a pre-revenue biotech company at IPO using probability trees and real option techniques. Company is based in Massachusetts and lists in London on AIM. Products are genetically-modified fast-growing salmon for fish farmers and disease-prevention drugs and... View Details

Keywords: IPO; Valuation; Real Options; Decision Tree; Biotech; Genetically Modified; Salmon; Entrepreneurship; Finance; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; North and Central America; Europe; South America

February 2001 (Revised August 2003)
Case

United Grain Growers Limited (A)

By: Peter Tufano and Joshua Musher

United Grain Growers Ltd. (UGG), a Canadian grain distributor, audited its exposure to a number of key risks, especially the impact of weather on grain volumes and operating income. Understanding these risks was crucial because the company was in the midst of a major... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Weather; Distribution Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Canada

February 1999
Teaching Note

Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc.: Supply Management TN

By: Francis Aguilar, Paul Clark and Xin Xi He

Teaching Note for (9-898-238) and (9-898-239). View Details

Keywords: Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

November 1994 (Revised September 1996)
Case

RiceSelect

By: Alvin J. Silk and Mary Shelman

In August 1994, Robin Andrews, President of RiceTec, Inc., faces a critical decision that will affect his firm's future: what policy should RiceTec follow for supplying grocery retailers with private label merchandise? RiceTec, a small privately owned firm engaged in... View Details

Keywords: Cash Flow; Leadership; Growth and Development Strategy; Brands and Branding; Marketing Strategy; Supply Chain Management; Private Ownership; Research and Development; Conflict Management; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

Find at Harvard

08 Jan 2014
What Do You Think?

Do Productivity Increases Contribute to Social Inequality?

once was considered thinking and will increasingly do so." Bill Barker agreed, in the process offering his solution: In the past, he wrote, the portion of the working population employed in agriculture dropped from 50 percent to less... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

07 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Three Steps for Crisis Prevention

challenges, not on the hard work of winning hearts and minds, Shapiro ultimately lost his company. He was forced to sell Monsanto to Pharmacia-Upjohn, which bought it for its pharmaceutical division, valuing the agricultural biotechnology... View Details

Keywords: by Michael D. Watkins & Max H. Bazerman

31 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: Jan. 31

financial management and the usefulness of formal hedging of agricultural production risks was offered to randomly selected farmers in Gujarat, India. The authors evaluate the effect of the financial literacy training and three marketing... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne & Carmen Nobel

01 Sep 2017
News

History’s Lessons

use of agricultural chemicals in this country...so that our supply of food will be reduced to [Iron Curtain] parity.” Readers and reporters jumped into the fray. Some journalists lined up with the chemical industry. A writer in the... View Details

Keywords: Abraham Lincoln; Ernest Shackelford; Rachel Carson

21 Dec 2022
News

HBS Community Comes Together in Wake of Ukraine Invasion

entrepreneurs who are creating an agricultural and IT powerhouse that is attracting the attention of the rest of the world, while corruption has been replaced with reforms and business deregulation that the West would be envious of,” he... View Details

22 Feb 2011
News

Invested in Social Change

Keywords: Agriculture; Agriculture; Agriculture; Agriculture; Agriculture; Agriculture

23 Sep 2024
Blog Post

2024 Summer Internships in Business & Environment

surplus food to build a more equitable, inclusive, and circular food system by feeding those in need. Carina's role prior to HBS was Brand Manager at Little Leaf Farms, an indoor agriculture startup. View Details

07 Nov 2017
First Look

New Research and Ideas: November 7, 2017

competitiveness in the face of the territorial extent of the United States and its ability to integrate a dynamic industrial sector with ample raw material supplies, agriculture commodities, markets, and labor into one national economy.... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

19 Jan 2011
First Look

First Look: Jan. 18

risk or speculate on future price trends. In recent decades trading had undergone significant growth. From its roots in agricultural commodities, with trading typically occurring in face-to-face transactions in pits on exchange floors,... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

20 Nov 2018
Cold Call Podcast

Building a Nonprofit Marketplace to Feed America

Keywords: Re: Scott Duke Kominers; Agriculture & Agribusiness; Agriculture & Agribusiness; Agriculture & Agribusiness

June 1987 (Revised May 1990)
Case

John Deere Component Works (B)

By: Robert S. Kaplan

Having installed an activity-based system, the division is now exploring the insight provided by that system. In particular, it is studying the economics of lot-size process planning and product mix management. View Details

Keywords: Activity Based Costing and Management; Production; Business or Company Management; Planning; Cost Accounting; Cost Management; Product Marketing; Management Practices and Processes; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry

2018
Book

Varieties of Green Business: Industries, Nations and Time

By: Geoffrey Jones

Published at a time of ever-increasing warnings that the pace of climate change and other environmental changes risk making the Earth unsustainable within our own lifetimes, this book looks at the past of green business to identify lessons for the future. It provides... View Details

Find at Harvard

25 Sep 2007
First Look

First Look: September 25, 2007

Wheat Pool 2005 Harvard Business School Case 906-402 CEO Mayo Schmidt had just guided his firm through five difficult years. Survival had come with the difficult decision to change the 80-year-old agricultural cooperative into a Canadian... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

May 2024
Case

Naked Wines: The Profit vs. Growth Decision

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Edward A. Meyer

Nick Devlin faced a difficult strategic decision in October 2022. As the CEO of a UK-based subscription business connecting wine drinkers in the US, UK, and Australia with winemakers from around the world (which one journalist called the “Netflix of Wine”), he had to... View Details