20/20 Foresight

20/20 Foresight
Author: Hugh Courtney
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2001
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781578512669

In the midst of a changing economy, most executives continue to use a strategy toolkit designed for yesterday's more stable marketplace. As a result, strategies emerge that neither manage the risks nor take advantage of the opportunities that arise in highly uncertain times. Now, McKinsey shows strategists how to tailor every aspect of the decision-making process-from formulation to implementation-to the level of uncertainty faced, describes the strategic-planning processes readers can use to monitor, update, and revise strategies as necessary in volatile markets, and includes a toolkit for identifying, developing, and testing new strategy options-complete with guidelines for applying the right tool to the right situation at the right time. A comprehensive approach to strategy development under all possible levels of uncertainty and across all kinds of industries, this is the essential guide for making tough strategic choices in a changing world. Hugh Courtney is an Associate Principal with the Global Strategy Practice at McKinsey Company in Washington D.C.

Adapting to Climate Uncertainty in African Agriculture

Adapting to Climate Uncertainty in African Agriculture
Author: Stephen Whitfield
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2015-08-20
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317534727

Future climatic and agro-ecological changes in Africa are uncertain and associated with high degrees of spatial and temporal variability and this change is differently simulated within divergent climate-crop models and in controlled crop breeding stations. Furthermore, uncertainty emerges in local contexts, not just in response to climatic systems, but to social, economic, and political systems, and often with implications for the appropriateness and adoption of technologies or the success of alternative cropping systems. This book examines the challenges of adaptation in smallholder farming in Africa, analysing the social, economic, political and climatic uncertainties that impact on agriculture in the region and the range of solutions proposed. Drawing on case studies of genetically modified crops, conservation agriculture, and other 'climate smart' solutions in eastern and southern Africa, the book identifies how uncertainties are framed 'from above' as well experienced 'from below', by farmers themselves. It provides a compelling insight into why ideas about adaptation emerge, from whom, and with what implications. This book offers a unique perspective and will be highly relevant to students of climate change adaptation, food security and poverty alleviation, as well as policy-makers and field practitioners in international development and agronomy.

Risk, Uncertainty and the Agricultural Firm

Risk, Uncertainty and the Agricultural Firm
Author: Charles Britt Moss
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2010
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9814287628

This text is the first major survey of risk analysis from the perspective of the agricultural firms since Agricultural Decision Analysis by Anderson, Dillon, and Hardaker published in 1977. In addition to updating the traditional material from that text, this book includes the statistical foundations of decision making under risk and uncertainty. Adding to the material covered in Anderson, Dillon, and Hardaker, the text includes material on dynamic decision rules, the arbitrage pricing model, real options theory, and state-contingent production relationships. Risk, Uncertainty, and the Agricultural Firm provides a unique discussion of each application ? developing the theoretical basis for each model and presenting an empirical roadmap (or the ?nuts and bolts?) of each model to facilitate the empirical application of each technique.

Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land

Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land
Author: Gary Paul Nabhan
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Arid regions agriculture
ISBN: 1603584536

This book lays out a variety of practical ways to prepare for a changing climate by paying attention to soil, water harvesting, types of crops planted, and ways to protect pollinators.