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The objective of the present work is to analyze the main deficiencies that limit the contracting process of the agricultural cooperatives in the province of Granma, Cuba. Within the empirical methods, scientific observation and two group interviews with members of the director boards of agricultural cooperatives in the municipalities of Bayamo and Cauto Cristo were used. In addition, three surveys were applied; the first one was done to 81 Granma´s cooperative presidents in 2005; the second survey was applied to 37 presidents of cooperatives in the Bayamo municipality in 2017 and the third one, to 16 presidents of cooperatives from Cauto Cristo in 2020. The main conclusions of this research are that the legal framework for contracting the production of agricultural cooperatives is well designed in the different documents that regulate this process; the ups and downs of the contracting policy of the production of agricultural cooperatives in the last 20 years has allowed the production of shortcomings in the process that have a negative impact on the economic management of agricultural cooperatives; and the last conclusion is that the main shortcomings of the contracting process are the repeated breach of contracts both for the sale of raw materials to cooperatives and for the purchase of products, the imposition of contracts on the boards of directors; the low preparation of them to face the negotiation process and the degree of dissatisfaction they have with the hiring process. El presente trabajo tiene por objetivo analizar las principales insuficiencias que limitan el proceso de contratación de las cooperativas agropecuarias en la provincia de Granma, Cuba. Dentro de los métodos empíricos se utilizó la observación científica y dos entrevistas grupales con miembros de las juntas directivas de cooperativas agropecuarias en los municipios de Bayamo y Cauto Cristo; además se aplicaron tres encuestas, la primera a 81 presidentes de cooperativas de Granma en el 2005; la segunda a 37 presidentes de cooperativas en el municipio Bayamo en el 2017 y la tercera a 16 presidentes de cooperativas de Cauto Cristo en el 2020. A las principales conclusiones que arrojó esta investigación son que el marco legal de la contratación de la producción de las cooperativas agropecuarias está bien diseñado en los diferentes documentos que norman ese proceso; que los vaivenes de la política de contratación de la producción de las cooperativas agropecuarias en los últimos 20 años ha permitido que se produzcan insuficiencias en el proceso que repercuten negativamente sobre la gestión económica de las cooperativas agropecuarias; y que las principales insuficiencias del proceso de contratación son el reiterado incumplimiento de los contratos tanto para la venta de insumos a las cooperativas como para la compra de las producciones, la imposición de los contratos a las juntas directivas; la baja preparación de las juntas directivas para enfrentar el proceso de negociación y el grado de insatisfacción que tienen con el proceso de contratación.

A partir de l’analyse d’ouvrages édités à l’attention des masses populaires, de listes de productions et de traités agricoles, l’article propose une lecture critique des politiques agricoles mises en œuvre au Japon entre le début du XVIIe siècle et la fin du XIXe siècle. Il apparaît qu’au cours de cette période le pays a encouragé une uniformisation des productions agricoles sur l’ensemble de son territoire suite à l’application de savoirs importés de la Chine des Ming (1368-1644). Or, la capitale de l’empire Ming (Nankin) était située dans une région où les conditions climatiques subtropicales humides correspondaient à celles de l’Ouest du Japon, mais certainement pas à celles du Nord-est où les effets des famines ont été paradoxalement amplifiés. Cette aberration géographique peut s’expliquer à la fois par la sociologie de l’élite politique et par l’importance des représentations alimentaires du Kansai dans l’ensemble de la société d’Edo. Using works published for a popular readership, lists of products and agricultural treaties, this article proposes a critic of the agricultural policies implemented in Japan from the early seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century. It appears that the country practiced at this time a standardized agricultural production throughout its territory following the application of a knowledge imported from Ming China (1368-1644). But the capital of the Ming Empire (Nanking) was located in a region of China where the subtropical climate conditions matched western Japan, but certainly not to the Northeast areas where the effects of famine were amplified. This geographical misunderstanding can be explained by the sociology of the Edo’s political elite and by the importance of Kansai’s food habits representations in the whole Edo society.

The production of biogas from animal, crops, or urban waste benefits environmental-friendly energy production, and it is also beneficial for sustainable agricultural production through the use of liquid organic fertiliser as a source of organic matter. A number of systems are available for the transportation and application of the liquid organic fertiliser but detailed in-field operations planning tools are necessary to establish safe conclusions on the advantages and disadvantages of each application system. Here, an algorithmic approach for the operational planning of liquid organic fertiliser application using the umbilical system is developed and presented. The approach provides all the key operational parameters necessary for the evaluation of a selected operational scenario, together with the relative significance of the various part operations involved, taking into account attributes of the operating environment. The whole system has been built as a web-based decision support system tool. A set of results demonstrated the use of the tool for supporting decisions on the adoption of the umbilical system as an operational system for the application of the organic fertiliser. A second set of results demonstrated the use of the tool for comparing an umbilical system in terms of cost and time with a tanker system. The comparison between these two systems quantified the benefit of such field operation models to accurately simulate in-field machine activities and provide precise case-based data rather than average norm based evaluations of selected field operation systems.

[EN] In decision-making processes, reliability and risk aversion play a decisive role. This paper presents a framework for stochastic optimization of control strategies for groundwater nitrate pollution from agriculture under hydraulic conductivity uncertainty. The main goal is to analyze the influence of uncertainty in the physical parameters of a heterogeneous groundwater diffuse pollution problem on the results of management strategies, and to introduce methods that integrate uncertainty and reliability in order to obtain strategies of spatial allocation of fertilizer use in agriculture. A hydro-economic modeling approach is used for obtaining the allocation of fertilizer reduction that complies with the maximum permissible concentration in groundwater while minimizes agricultural income losses. The model is based upon nonlinear programming and groundwater flow and mass transport numerical simulation, condensed on a pollutant concentration response matrix. The effects of the hydraulic conductivity uncertainty on the allocation of nitrogen reduction among agriculture pollution sources are analyzed using four formulations: Monte Carlo simulation with pre-assumed parameter field, Monte Carlo optimization, stacking management, and mixed-integer stochastic model with predefined reliability. The formulations were tested in an illustrative example for 100 hydraulic conductivity realizations with different variance. The results show a high probability of not meeting the groundwater quality standards when deriving a policy from just a deterministic analysis. To increase the reliability several realizations can be optimized at the same time. By using a mixed-integer stochastic formulation, the desired reliability level of the strategy can be fixed in advance. The approach allows deriving the trade-offs between the reliability of meeting the standard and the net benefits from agricultural production. In a risk-averse decision making, not only the reliability of meeting the standards counts, but also the probability distribution of the maximum pollutant concentrations. A sensitivity analysis was carried out to assess the influence of the variance of the hydraulic conductivity fields on the strategies. The results show that the larger the variance, the greater the range of maximum nitrate concentrations and the worst case (or maximum value) that could be reached for the same level of reliability. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd., The study has been partially supported by the European Community 7th Framework Project GENESIS (226536) on groundwater systems and from the Plan Nacional I+D+I 2008-2011 of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (subprojects CGL2009-13238-C02-01 and CGL2009-13238-C02-02). The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions for improving the paper.

Agriculture is branch of economy of special importance to the economy of the Republic of Serbia since it creates approximately 20% of gross national product and has realistic potentials for increase of production volume and processing of agricultural products. Economical potential of agriculture imposes the need for analysis of small and medium entrepreneurship which should be carrier of future development of agribusiness. Cluster analysis is method to determine how the municipalities in the Republic of Serbia are grouped according to the level of development of small and medium agribusinesses. Also, in this way we get insight into current condition of regional development of this sector as well as possibility for development of least developed municipalities in Serbia. Poljoprivreda je privredna grana koja ima poseban značaj za privredu Republike Srbije jer stvara oko 20% bruto društvenog proizvoda i poseduje realne mogućnosti za povećanje obima proizvodnje i prerade poljoprivrednih proizvoda. Ekonomski potencijal koji poseduje poljoprivreda nameće potrebu analize stanja u oblasti malog i srednjeg preduzetništva koje treba da bude nosilac budućeg razvoja agrobiznisa. Klaster analiza je metod kojim će se utvrditi kako se grupišu opštine u Republici Srbiji prema nivou razvijenosti malih i srednjih preduzeća iz oblasti poljoprivrede Tako će se dobiti uvid u trenutno stanje regionalne razvijenosti ovog sektora poljoprivrede kao i mogućnosti za razvoj najnerazvijenijih opština u Srbiji.