In order for marketing to play a role in sustainable economic development, a critical reassessment of marketing theory is required. Both the "societal marketing" of the 1970s and contemporary "green marketing" are efforts to improve the relationship between marketing and the natural environment. Taken alone, however, either approach provides but a partial analysis of the problems that are involved. Starting from the assumptions and limitations of economic and cognitive approaches to marketing and from the dilemmas between micro-marketing objectives and macromarketing goals, marketing is shown to have an inherent drive toward unsustainability. Sustainable marketing requires finding optimal regulatory frameworks for governing the role of marketing within a confined ecological space.

Precision livestock farming (PLF) is the management of livestock using the principles and technology of process engineering. Key to PLF is the dense monitoring of variegated parameters, including animal growth, output of produce (e.g. milk, eggs), diseases, animal behaviour, and the physical environment (e.g. thermal micro-environment, ammonia emissions). While its proponents consider PLF a win-win strategy that combines production efficiency with sustainability goals and animal welfare, critics emphasise, inter alia, the potential interruption of human-animal relationships. This paper discusses the notion that the objectification of animals by PLF influences the developmental pathways of conventional industrial farming. We conduct a conceptual analysis of objectification by comparing discussions in feminist ethics and animal ethics. We find that in animal ethics, objectification includes deontological arguments regarding instrumentalisation, de-animalisation, alienation, commodification and quantification of animals. The focus on socio-political context and relationality connects these debates to central ideas in care ethics. We adopt a care ethics perspective to assess the implications of the objectification of animals in livestock farming. The basic claim is that sensory knowledge symbolised by the farmers' unity of hand, head and heart would make it harder to objectify animals than abstract and instrumental reasoning where the pursuit of knowledge is intertwined with the pursuit of control, as in mainstream PLF. Despite of what can be considered as a good caring relationship between farmers and animals that is mediated by PLF, people involved in conventional industrial farming still seem to become further detached from farmers and animals, because the PLF system itself is objectifying. PLF redefines the notion of care, in terms of data transparency, standardisation of methods for analysis, real-time collection and processing of data, remote control, and the use of digital platforms. This creates new expectations and requires a redistribution of responsibilities within a wider scope of relations in the value chain.

The increased opportunities of smallholder farmers for commercial production of native potato varieties have resulted in an interest to support production and use of quality seed tubers of these varieties by the formal sector. In this context, a study was carried out to explore farmer perception of seed quality and the differences with formal expert perceptions of seed quality. It introduces Means-End-Chains methodology as a novel approach in studying farmers' decision on the use of varieties and seed. Results show that security, health and wellness are important personal values that influence the quality perception of small-scale farmers in Andean highlands. To pursue these values, they look for seed tubers that reflect the variety characteristics in combination with seed quality cues that reflect altitude, soil and low input management. Farmers do not associate these last ones with seed tubers from the formal seed sector.

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