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The expanded agricultural trade deficit in recent years concern about the international competitiveness of Chinese agricultural products. In this paper, guided by Michael Porter's diamond model theory, based on agricultural production and trade data in China and the world from 1986 to 2011, we use principal component analysis, cointegration and vector error correction model, to perform an empirical analysis of the impact of agricultural modernization , economic growth and industrialization on the international competitiveness of Chinese agricultural products. The results show that China's agricultural modernization is slow, the demand for agricultural products caused by economic growth is increased, and excessive rural labor transfer due to industrialization leads to decline in the international competitiveness of Chinese agricultural products. China should increase its efforts to promote the modernization of agriculture and level of industry nurturing agriculture ; use WTO rules to create a good international and domestic environment for the development of China's agriculture and improvement of the international competitiveness of agricultural products; give full play to the role of demand n boosting the industrial upgrading of domestic agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The situation of agriculture in Qinzhou was introduced firstly. And then, the bottleneck of the development of modern agriculture in Qinzhou was pointed out, which including considerable effects of natural disasters, insufficient agricultural investment, backward infrastructure, inadequate agricultural S&T innovation and promotion, low industrialization, incomplete agricultural chain, poor capacity in resisting market risks, and lagged manpower resources in rural areas. Finally, the countermeasures were proposed for development of Qinzhou's modern agriculture, including defining the characteristics of agricultural products, formulating scientific agricultural planning, strengthening agricultural science and technology innovation, training and on-site guidance, cultivation and brand strategy of agricultural leading enterprises, establishing agricultural disaster prevention mechanism and vigorously developing ecological agriculture tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in the natural environment and agricultural systems induced by economic and industrial development, including population dynamics (growth, urbanization, migration), are major causes resulting in the persistence, emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases in developing countries. In the face of rapid demographic, economic and social transformations, the People's Republic of China (P.R. China) is undergoing unprecedented environmental and agricultural change. We review emerging and re-emerging diseases such as schistosomiasis, dengue, avian influenza, angiostrongyliasis and soil-transmitted helminthiasis that have occurred in P.R. China due to environmental and agricultural change. This commentary highlights the research priorities and the response strategies, namely mitigation and adaptation, undertaken to eliminate the resurgence of those infectious diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture - economic growth relationship is the subject of many studies, with different methodology, content and perspectives. In this context, the paper presents an econometric analysis of macroeconomic level in order to measure the contribution of agriculture to economic growth equation and evaluating the causal relationship with industry. The econometric analysis undertaken, using OLS method (Ordinary Least Square or the method of least squares) and TSLS method (Two Stage Least Square or the method of least squares in two-stage). Contribution of agriculture is defined in terms of the agricultural GDP (gross domestic product) and the economic growth in terms of evolution of real GDP. The results reveal that agriculture occupies a secondary place in economic growth. Regarding the links between agriculture and industry, they are in favor of industry. Why? Because, in the agricultural GDP equation, the industrial GDP coefficient has a negative sign (-), and in the industrial GDP equation, the agricultural GDP coefficient is positive (+). Therefore, the industrial sector has greater benefits from industry-agriculture relationship and by effect of agriculture-growth relationship. Developing the agricultural sector deserves o priority position since growth in this sector helps the industry to grow further. However, capital investment in agriculture releases farm labor that often is not absorbed by the economy and emphasizes the degree of rural poverty. Thus, encouraging the industrial development by increasing agricultural sector, the position of rural poverty can increases. This reality indicates that agricultural development should not be hampered in favor of concentrating resources for industrial development and must be found an optimal balance between industry and agriculture, so the rural poverty to be alleviated and the economy to record a sustainable growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces convergent innovation (CI) as a form of meta-innovation-an innovation in the way we innovate. CI integrates human and economic development outcomes, through behavioral and ecosystem transformation at scale, for sustainable prosperity and affordable universal health care within a whole-of-society paradigm. To this end, CI combines technological and social innovation (including organizational, social process, financial, and institutional), with a special focus on the most underserved populations. CI takes a modular approach that convenes around roadmaps for real world change-a portfolio of loosely coupled complementary partners from the business community, civil society, and the public sector. Roadmaps serve as collaborative platforms for focused, achievable, and time-bound projects to provide scalable, sustainable, and resilient solutions to complex challenges, with benefits both to participating partners and to society. In this paper, we first briefly review the literature on technological innovation that sets the foundations of CI and motivates its feasibility. We then describe CI, its building blocks, and enabling conditions for deployment and scaling up, illustrating its operational forms through examples of existing CI-sensitive innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural livelihoods in the northeastern Thai borderlands have moved away from being predominantly agrarian, yet farming remains a desirable alternative for many people. The empirical findings from fieldwork in a village in the northeastern Thai–Lao borderlands indicate how dependence on agriculture is determined by family contexts, such as land ownership, education level of household members, their gender and age. Cheap Lao labour and government price-support policies have enabled farmers to remain in production and diversify. Some educated rural people have successfully found employment opportunities outside the village as migratory wage labour, and are able to attain higher social status back in the village. Successful migrants have invested their earnings on cash-crop production and become rural entrepreneurs. Conversely, less educated migrants were unsuccessful in finding good jobs in the city and viewed agriculture as a more favourable alternative and valuable security. Geographical, cultural and economic specificities conditioned rural transformation and contributed to increasingly diverse and geographically extended livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's Hokkaido region is popularly known as “Milkland,” underscoring the importance of the local dairy industry. Nevertheless, milk production costs in Japan are much higher than in surrounding nations and in order to bolster the domestic industry, for example justifying large subsidies, a constant “crisis state” has to be maintained by government and related agencies. In this paper I argue that the rhetoric of food security has a particular and lengthy history in Japan. It is generally communicated in terms of safety, risk, and self-sustainability, the need to protect Japan and Japanese from a series of ever-contingent threats both real and imagined. Concomitantly, there are essential misunderstandings between governmental agencies and dairy farmers rooted in the different identities and livelihoods that arise in “culturing” differing agricultures. As a result, official agencies claiming to protect the dairy industry in fact, through a mix of nationalist imagination and bio-scientific ignorance, work against it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Seeds are simultaneously a meaningful part of the daily life of many people involved in agriculture and instruments for national and international policy making. This thematic section explores the sensorial connections between people and plants, the relationships of power that impact and frame them, and the reflections and contestations that they are a part of. In the midst of Western societies and among scientists and farmers, different ontologies and different perceptions of being and coevolving with others in the world coexist, as we will show by looking at human-seed relationships. Local and global legacies create powerful differences between seeds, while various forms of international governance simultaneously push seeds toward homogenization and agriculture toward industrialization while claiming to preserve diversity. Intellectual property rights over seeds and seed regulations have become powerful tools of multinational seed corporations for appropriating large parts of farmers' incomes and controlling the food chain, while it is the sensorial and emotional connections between humans and plants that provide the drive to resist them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Se aborda el binomio cadenas productivas y territorio, identificándose dos tipos de desarrollo: el "enclave" del Secano Interior y el de "encadenamiento potencial" entre dicho enclave y la Conurbación del Gran Concepción. Los beneficios de la cadena productiva forestal-celulosa, de importancia mundial, no llegan a su territorio, que permanece en la precariedad. El Gran Concepción, segunda conurbación industrial de importancia nacional, no logra conectarse virtuosamente con su entorno cercano mediante sus redes económicas, ni tampoco con la cadena forestal-celulosa del Secano Interior. El artículo se basa en datos de flujos económicos a partir de la matriz insumo-producto de 2008, en encuestas efectuadas en el contexto de un proyecto del Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Regional (fndr, 2008), y en el estudio sobre Chile y sus tipos de desarrollo (Falabella, 2000 y 2002). Finalmente, se plantea la necesidad de generar una plataforma política territorial para el desarrollo económico que facilite la rearticulación productiva. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through overview of relevant literature and on the basis of basically grasping frontier study and development trend, this paper discussed the grain security from industrial structure, farmland protection, grain import, urbanization and industrialization, gain reserve, ecological protection, and grain security pre-warning, in the hope of providing some convenience and reference for future related researches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates structural change in Argentina between 1935 and 1960, a period of rapid industrialization and of relative decline of the agricultural sector. We use a dynamic three-sector computable general equilibrium model of the period to analyze the effects of the policies of import-substituting industrialization (ISI), and changing factor endowments, on the structure of the economy. We find that the declining land-labor ratio was more important than ISI in explaining relative stagnation in agriculture. ISI gave a substantial boost to manufacturing, but primarily at the expense of non-traded services, rather than of agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: The ideal of the intensification of agriculture has vanished in developed market economies as the outcomes of conventional production have caused growing environmental problems, in particular in areas with a high concentration of livestock. There is also a growing concern notable about animal welfare issues, accompanied by the belief that agricultural production needs to move away from an conventional agriculture towards one that is loosely defined as ‘alternative’. This paper uses the concept of multifunctionality as a lens for describing and explaining the nature of rural change in Germany. I argue that the case study example of the Oldenburger Münsterland illustrates that multifunctionality rates weakly as agricultural practice in production systems dominated by a conventional food regime and – hence – a transition towards diversity and resilience has to occur within conventional agriculture. In spite of the popularity of the idea that areas of intensive livestock farming might have been gradually transformed into emerging alternative economic spaces, the principle of coexistence between ‘productivist’ and ‘non-productivist’ practices poses major challenges. In particular the scarcity of agricultural land hinders the transition into ‘alternative’ food futures in the Oldenburger Münsterland, while the doubts about conventional agriculture and the industrialized food industry rise in an unprecedented way in German society. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The environmental protection represents an important subject in international debates, being accentuated by the alert rhythm of economic development and the higher demands of the current consumer generations. In general, it can be claimed that the most developed countries are producing the largest quantities of waste and pollutants and are consuming large quantities of energy and natural resources. The impact these countries have upon the natural environment is strong and destructive. Therefore, it can be remarked that the industrialization level is inversely proportional with the environmental state, which is getting worse by the year: reduced timbered areas, agricultural soil degradation, a thinner ozone layer, numerous extinct plant and animal species, accentuated greenhouse effect, etc. Affecting the natural environment has severe repercussions upon the quality of life, manifesting itself through water, soil and atmospheric pollution. These are the reasons why the authors of this paper are analysing, in the present study, the problems concerning the environmental protection and life quality [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of new characteristics and trend of China's agricultural development in the post-WTO period, combining analysis of factors influencing agricultural industrial safety, this paper builds an evaluation indicator system for China's agricultural industrial safety by scientific indicator system design method. This indicator system includes risk factor indicators( showing risk degree) and capacity factor indicators( showing guaranteeing ability), and consists of 7 subsystems: consumption safety, production safety, industrial controlling capacity, industrial development capacity, industrial development environment, government functions and industrial foundation condition. Risk factor is divided into 5 levels: higher risk, high risk, medium risk, low risk and lower risk; guarantee risk is also divided into five levels: strong, healthy, normal, weak and disabled. According to the overall evaluation score obtained from weighting sum, the agricultural industrial safety includes 5 types: very safe, safe, basically safe, not safe and hazardous. This evaluation indicator system is expected to providing theoretical reference for evaluating China's agricultural industrial safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 19th century, in Bursa, there have been significant changes in cocoon farming and silk weaving industry. In this change process, whose aim is renovation, industrialization process has been put forward in producing silk from cocoon, the production has been started in accordance with the scientific techniques against silkworm diseases and cocoon production has been directed according to the new regulations. In the beginning of the 20th century, with the emergence of working class and employment of women in this field by opening silk weaving factories, a new period has started. All these developments have affected the social and economical structure of Bursa significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses poverty and calorific undernourishment in the Indian state of Gujarat, where high and market-led industrial growth has resulted in rapid economic improvement. The study is carried out through a combination of secondary and survey-based data. We conclude that the neoliberal agenda of uncontrolled, outward-looking growth has not resulted in significant reduction of poverty or malnourishment in rural areas. Furthermore, while land ownership is officially used as a proxy for wealth distribution, class position appears a better predictor of poverty status in the rural areas than landownership per se. At the policy level, there is a need to revive the agrarian economy and create new non-agricultural assets, and the primary focus in the state must shift to the distribution of created assets rather than a single-minded focus on growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L’industrialisation et l’urbanisation entraînent un mouvement paradoxal qui rapproche, concentre et uniformise, d’une part, éloigne, désunit et différencie, d’autre part. Ces évolutions contradictoires alimentent deux conceptions de l’avenir des agricultures et alimentations du monde, deux visions contrastées d’où naissent les principales controverses actuelles ainsi qu’un impérieux besoin de les dépasser. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taoyuan tableland faces the increasing water demand associated with the expansion of industrialization and urbanization. The county currently relies on the Shihmen Reservoir as the single water supply system. It will be of great concern in the shortage of water resources. This study aims to explore the impact of changes in farm ponds on the regional agricultural environment in Taoyuan County with multiyear (1993, 2003, and 2010) SPOT satellite imagery. Results show that farm ponds have decreased by 10.55million m2 from 1993 to 2010, and the existing farm ponds were 18.80 million m2 in 2010, equivalent to the irrigation water of 21.10~31.65 million m3 (tons) and 37.61~56.41 million m3 (tons), respectively. The existing farm ponds are able to provide the water supply for 1.88~2.82 thousand hectares of agricultural land, accounting for 6.70%~10.50% of total agricultural area of Taoyuan County. Corresponding to the government's promotion policy (2012) on activating fallow land, if we redeploy the existing farm ponds for activating fallow fields, it will lessen the water supply burden of Shimen Reservoir. Thus, farm ponds remain the significant water facilities. For the sustainable agriculture, farm ponds shall be classified and cherished as a public asset for the future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to understand why both anti-land acquisition protests and proindustrial rhetoric of provincial governments in India are fodder for populist politics. To understand this, the article explores the meanings that land and development have for the rural communities in West Bengal, India, who are trying to straddle the multiple worlds of farm ownership and nonfarm employment. Based on five years of ethnographic fieldwork in various parts of rural West Bengal, this article argues that resistances to corporate globalization, taken to be unambiguously anti-industrial or anticapitalist, reflect complex intentions. Protesting villagers are ambivalent toward corporate capital, but their support for industries and protests against corporations are grounded in local moral worlds that see both nonfarm work and landownership as markers of critical social distinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coconut has been expanding in recent years, due to growing demand in the sector of green coconut water. Due to this event, there is a significant generation of waste from its production. Within this context, the objective was to analyze the strategies for the use of waste coconut husks, through the use of coconut fiber in order to reduce environmental impacts and check the type and level of economic and social benefits through technology presenting potential forms of recycling to be employed through the coconut shells proposed uses of coconut fibers in order to mitigate the impacts caused by shells, enabling the production of new products. The evaluation of the potential of using waste coconut can be an alternative to reduce the space occupied by these wastes in landfills and dumps. The methodology is a bibliographical study with qualitative approach of exploratory and descriptive data collection in key areas of agribusiness and waste generation from coconut. The results describe the various techniques described for the potential use of such wastes in different ways. However, even the green coconut husks being considered as remnants of agriculture with high potential for reuse, however, unfortunately, were found rare actions taken in Brazil to take advantage of this capability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In independent India, national development has been largely equated with economic growth and surplus. Big centralized industries, irrigation projects have been symbols of such development, which through the process of industrialization promised to set India on the path of modernization and development. One of the inevitable outcomes of this has been massive environmental degradation and development induced displacement. India is among the foremost countries in the world in developing its water resources. As per the National Register of Large dams, India has as on today 4291 large dams including the 695 dams under construction (Agarval, Narain & Sen: 1999). India ranks third in the world in dam building, after US and China. While some of these dams were built primarily for flood control, water supply, and hydroelectric power generation, the primary purpose of most Indian dams remains irrigation. Due to favorable agro-climate, by and large the Indian economy has been traditionally based on agriculture since centuries. Agriculture contributes about one-third of Gross National Product, and remains a key sector in the national economy. In spite of the fact that this country is endowed with vast land and water resources, it is a water short country in relation to agriculture, municipal and industrial needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 1990s, industrialised Cuba was plunged into crisis as it lost its major source of food, fuel and agricultural input supplies with the demise of the Soviet bloc. Within a decade, the country had recovered sufficiently to double agricultural production, increase calorific availability by 25 per cent, and maintain a consistent and equitable social food programme. Given the continued shortfall of petroleum imports into the country, this was a major achievement, yet it is little studied or used as a learning example for other nations struggling with food insecurity. This article presents the results of a unique study into Cuban agriculture and its food system at the end of the 1990s, identifying the main mechanisms implemented by Cuba to regain its food security status. It argues that the lack of interest in the Cuban experience by the international community indicates that political bias may be causing us to ignore lessons that could contribute to achieving food security in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Over the last 20 years, the US dairy industry has experienced a significant transformation from small farm operations to an industrialization of the milking process. This transformation has resulted in improvements in process efficiency and product quality. Milking tasks in large-herd parlors are highly-repetitive involving awkward postures and high muscle loads of the upper extremity. Field-based direct measures of physical exposures have been limited in challenging work settings such as dairies. This study evaluated full-shift exposures of posture and motion of the upper extremity among large-herd parlor milkers using wireless inclinometry. Results suggest large-herd parlor workers may be exposed to high exposure levels (posture, movement velocity, repetition, and inadequate rest) associated with the development of shoulder pathology. Compared to other high-risk occupations involving shoulder-intensive work, parlor workers may have higher exposure levels. These findings warrant the need for continued field-based research with larger sample sizes to facilitate the development of cost-effective intervention strategies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article reconstructs the evolution of a multinational fruit processing company from Ghana. Starting from the perspective that firms more generally aim at achieving stability in intra- and extra-organisational relations, the article explores the practical means (organisational forms, resources, technologies, strategies and routines) through which the case study company achieved relational stability in global markets, but also shows how this was eroded in changing market environments. Extending out from this case study, the article also addresses the questions why some agro-business firms in Africa have developed more sophisticated high-value market connections while others have not and whether foreign direct investments can serve as catalysts for agro-industrialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the survey of regional development conditions in India. It states that U.S.-based specialists and geographers have developed the survey and used multiple definitions of development and region. It mentions that the development is conceptualized in various dimensions such as in terms of income and agriculture. It adds that Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra are unorganized sectors which continue to be essential in India's economy.

In recent decades it has been developed a specialized literature on the study of particular features of preindustrial agricultures. This paper, in base to such research line, analyzes the case of olive orchards in southern Spain, which today represent the largest tree concentration in Europe, right in the previous moment to its great expansion (mid 18th Century). We seek to understand the geography of its spreading, its low expansion before industrialization and the why only few territories on Andalusia appeared like premature focus of specialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The agriculture played an important role in the industrialization process of Mexico. However, the agricultural policy of State has isolated small scale farmers, giving priority just to large agricultural exporters. This study analyzes the implications that can have fair trade for the Mexican small scale farmers. The fair trade tries to cover the production cost and basic necessities for the small scale farmers, making direct ties between producers and consumers. This type of linkage guarantees the minimum price and the extra social payment to the small scale farmers, grouped in cooperatives o associations. Coffee is one of the most known fair trade product, and Mexico is one of the most important coffer exporters of the world. The fair trade of coffee production where many small farmers work is carried out by cooperative like UCIRI (Unión de Comunidades Indígenas de la Región Istmo). The case study shows that fair trade cannot provide complete answers to the all problems that have small farmers. But, since fair trade tries to promote small farmers well-being and many small farmers could get rid of extreme poverty thanks to fair trade, it might be possible to say that fair trade can be one valuable option for the sustainable development of small farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Iran, besides the unequal distribution of water resources across the whole country, the expansion of cities as a result of immigration, agricultural and industrial developments lead to problems in demands for both domestic water and other usages of water. In addition to this, in Iran, the amount of water per capita differs by basins as a result of the unequal distribution of precipitation and population density. Recently, the problems related to water resources Iran has been going through have attained a level affecting both Iran's domestic policy and her relations with the neighboring countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the sociology of science perspective, this paper attempts to trace the shifts in the knowledge and its application in the context of seed production-the central input in agriculture. The paper argues that the seed production, which was once in the hands of farming communities, has become industrialized with the advent of hybrid seeds. The hybrid seed production, based on phenotypic knowledge of the plants, marks the first phase of the industrialization of seed and the genetically modified seed, based on genotypic knowledge of the plants, marks the beginning of another phase in the industrialization of seed production. This paper draws attention to controversies over genetically modified seed based on economic, social, environmental considerations. This paper also discusses the implications of these developments and the changes in the institutional arrangements that govern the production and use of the seed, as these developments have profound implications for Indian agriculture and agrarian relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Since the development of industrialization, urbanization and agriculture, soils have been subjected to numerous variations in environmental conditions, which have resulted in modifications of the taxonomic diversity and functioning of the indigenous microbial communities. As a consequence, the functional significance of these losses/modifications of biodiversity, in terms of the capacity of ecosystems to maintain the functions and services on which humanity depends, is now of pivotal importance. In this context, one of the main challenges in soil microbial ecology is to better understand and predict the processes that drive soil microbial diversity and the link between diversity and ecosystem process. This review describes past, present and ongoing conceptual and methodological strategies employed to better assess and understand the distribution and evolution of soil microbial diversity with the aim of increasing our capacity to translate such diversity into soil biological functioning and, more widely, into ecosystem services. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

That researchers look for the inverted-U shape in inequality in the arbitrary periods of arbitrary countries underlies the divergent empirical evidence across studies. To point to the right context for the pattern, this paper establishes a formal mechanism in line with Kuznets' explanation that relates to the industrialization-cum-urbanization phases of closed trade regimes. The mechanism involves an interaction among urban-rural sectoral size differences, agricultural tastes/income, and migration, and predicts an inverted-U shape in inequality in the following way: (i) widening differences in the sizes of urban and rural sectors due to exogenous shocks affect negatively the agricultural tastes/income, worsening inequality; (ii) increasing sectoral size differences and decreasing agricultural tastes/income jointly foster intersectoral migration; (iii) migration acts, in turn, as an equilibrating effect, improving the income distribution. Empirically testing these predictions, non-Sub-Saharan developing countries' data support the mechanism, while data from developed and Sub-Saharan African countries provide little support, as per our prior expectations. This highlights a contrasting evidence on the inverted-U shape across country groups of differing development stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the relationship between the increasingly humanized spaces of early Canada and the patches of settlement that, at Confederation, were assembled into a country. It suggests that Harold Innis correctly identified some of the essential spaces of early Canada as, in his American way, did Frederick Jackson Turner. Both, however, offer limited perspectives: Innis because his analysis ill fit the areas of agricultural settlement where most people lived, Turner because of the imprecisions of his analysis and also because, in early Canada, the bounded nature of agricultural settlement severely constricted the westward expansion on which his analysis turned. But Innis was right about staple trades in non-agricultural areas, and Turner was right that areas of recent agricultural settlement were loci of particularly rapid cultural change. Both analyses can be filled in, and that, particularly with regard to Turner, this article attempts to do. In so doing, it considers the extent to which the early rural societies in Canada, the loci of most lives, can be considered to have been ideologically liberal. It also considers the particular patterns of secondary migration in and beyond bounded settlements, and their relationship to the construction and maintenance of social and cultural difference. Overall, the article suggests that the receptacles within which countries develop are important, that the Canadian and American receptacles were strikingly different, and that the spaces of early Canadian life have their continuing legacies in an ongoing engagement with sparsely settled land and with very different ways of being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on topics related to history and planning including attitudes towards menstruation in Elizabethan England, sexual fantasy in modern America, and feminism.

This paper argues that the food crisis cannot solely be equated with abrupt food price increases or seen as merely market induced. The unprecedented price increases of the first half of 2008, and the extremely low prices that followed, are expressions of a far wider and far more persistent underlying crisis, which has been germinating for more than a decade. It is the complex outcome of several combined processes, including the industrialization of agriculture, the liberalization of food and agricultural markets and the rise of food empires. The interaction of these processes has created a global agrarian crisis that has provoked the multifaceted food crisis. Both these crises are being accelerated through their interactions with the wider economic and financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The industrialization of agriculture in western societies has often led to either intensified use or abandonment of farmland and open pastures, but experimental evidence on how the dynamics of farmed ecosystems affect space use by large herbivores is limited. We experimentally manipulated farmland patches with cutting and (early summer) low- and high-intensity domestic sheep Ovis aries grazing according to traditional use in north Norway. After treatments, grazing reindeer Rangifer tarandus were exposed to the pastures the subsequent fall (2 months after treatments) and spring (11 months after treatments) as they typically do on their migratory route between summer and winter ranges. The experiment was conducted over 2 subsequent years. We predicted that sheep grazing on farmland during early summer may affect the critical fall and spring range conditions for reindeer either through negative (delayed competition) or positive (grazing facilitation) interactions. We found that the most marked effect of land use on the grazing pattern of reindeer was between no use (the control treatment) and all the other management options involving active land use. The grazing reindeer avoided the pastures no longer in use likely due to senescent plant material. There was a tendency that the lower intensity sheep grazing patches attracted more reindeer than the highest intensity use. These results highlight not only the general principle that large-scale agricultural changes may affect large herbivores in natural ecosystems, but they also increase our understanding of grazing facilitation as a mechanism in large herbivore assemblages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses ethical issues raised by automation systems in animal farming. These systems automatically collect various kinds of information about an animal and allow the farmer to monitor it remotely. It is argued that the relationship between the farmer and the individual animal is becoming increasingly distant and impoverished. Although this may protect the animal from some negative interactions, it is less clear whether use of these systems will lead to an increase in positive interactions of the kind beneficial for animal welfare. Furthermore, the measurement of specific parameters replaces observation of the animal as a whole, which may affect the perception of the animal. As automation systems replace traditional tasks, the role of the farmer is changing drastically. This may lead to deskilling in the farmer, which in turn may affect animal welfare. The value of automation systems in increasing productivity is clear; however, this paper questions the extent to which these systems can be used to enhance animal welfare. It is argued that ethically acceptable development of automation systems for farm animals can only be achieved if these systems prove to be beneficial in respect of animal welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The benefits of today's Indo-globalization have bypassed those most in need: the nearly 70% of the workforce that remains in agriculture. Only about 1.3 million of the total workforce have a tangible stake in India's vaunted New Economy. While that globalized sector lifts the aggregate economy toward nearly double digit growth, there will be little of China's labor-intensive industrialization to take up the slack as 70 million Indians enter the workforce over the next five years. This is a country with more indigenous billionaires than any except the US, yet one in three of the 1.1 billion population subsists on less than $1 per day. These are not the wages of substantive democracy, or even sustainable plutocracy. Globalized India will sink or swim by how well it negotiates its coming clash between haves and have-nots. Talk of a “Shining India” almost always omits reference to the rising scourge of Naxalism in the derelict countryside. The rural meltdown has reached such a scale that the usual Naxalite question must be reversed. Instead of asking how the movement became so widespread, we should ponder why it is not wider still. There is no doubt that the Other India will fight back against globalization on these terms. The only question is whether this resistance can be brought into the fold of mainstream Indian politics, thereby producing a uniquely democratic Indo-globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines issues related to urbanization with labour migration. The main departures from the traditional approaches to dynamics of economic structures are that the paper uses an alternative approach to consumer behaviour and introduces human capital accumulation via learning by doing. The model describes dynamic interactions among agricultural and industrial production, rural and urban amenities, distribution of production factors and preferences with endogenous capital and human capital accumulation. We show that the dynamic system may have either a single or multiple equilibrium points, depending upon returns to scale in the two sectors. We also examined effects of changes in some parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many years, tropical and subtropical forests have been deforested for agriculture, grazing, and timber extraction. Nevertheless in the last decade, several publications have suggested that some regions of Latin America are showing a process of forest transition. Forest transition theory predicts that industrialization and urbanization will lead to the abandonment of marginal agriculture lands and the recovery of natural systems such as forests. However, there are many ecological, economic, and social factors that could act as barriers to ecosystem recovery. To evaluate this hypothesis, we analyzed the socioeconomic and land-use changes during the last 30 years at the provincial and departmental level in the province of Misiones, Argentina. We described the changes in the distribution of urban and rural populations based on national population censuses from 1970, 1980, 1991, and 2001. Land-use change was based on a supervised analysis of four mosaics of Landsat Multispectral Scanner and Thematic Mapper satellite images from 1973, 1979, 1987/1989, and 2006. Although the change in the rural population varied greatly among the departments, there has been a dramatic increase in the urban population at the provincial level. The major land-use changes between 1973 and 2006 were an increase in monospecific plantations of mainly Pinus and Eucalyptus of 2702 km2 and a loss of 4689 km2 of natural forest. Misiones possesses the largest remnant of continuous Atlantic Forest, which is famous for its high level of biodiversity and endemism, but much of this forest now comprises monospecific plantations. Although demographic changes in Misiones are similar to those that have occurred other regions (i.e., rural-urban migration), and the increase in forest plantations helps to maintain forest cover, this cover has much lower ecological value than that of natural forest. To ensure the conservation of the high-diversity Atlantic Forest in Misiones requires a better effort to understand the interactions among the diverse factors that affect land-use patterns in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We test the early anthropogenic hypothesis that greenhouse-gas emissions produced by early agricultural activities in recent millennia kept the climate warmer than its natural level and offset an incipient glaciation. We use versions of the NCAR''s Community Climate System Model to investigate the natural climate that might exist today if CO2 and CH4 concentrations had fallen to their average levels reached during previous interglaciations (while ignoring the effects of aerosol changes). The model is run in a coupled atmosphere–slab ocean configuration with fixed land cover in one experiment and interactive vegetation changes in the other. With lowered greenhouse-gas concentrations, global-mean temperature falls by 2.75K under fixed land cover and by 3.0K with vegetation feedbacks included. Of the total global cooling with fixed land cover, 38% (62%) is attributable to early agricultural activities (industrialization), while early agriculture accounts for approximately half of the expanded permanent snow cover area. The large-scale cooling is amplified in polar regions, where mean-annual temperatures fall by up to 9K and sea-ice area more than doubles in the Southern Hemisphere. In high latitudes, boreal forest is replaced by tundra and tundra by polar desert, causing a higher surface albedo that amplifies regional Arctic cooling by up to 2K annually and 5K during spring. The greenhouse cooling in our simulations triggers widespread glacial inception in the Northern Hemisphere, where permanent snow cover expands by 80% (206%) without (with) vegetation feedbacks. The regional pattern of incipient glaciation is strongly influenced by both vegetation feedbacks and atmospheric circulation changes. While these results are fully consistent with the early anthropogenic hypothesis, further simulations with a dynamical ocean, higher spatial resolution, and other models are still needed to investigate the origin of human influence on global climate. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstracts of articles related to state and national planning are presented which include "Analysis of Rail Transit Project Selection Bias With an Incentive Approach," by Wenling Chen, "Urban History for Planners," by Carl Abbott and "Rebuilding the Modern City After Modernism in Toronto and Berlin," by Douglas Young.

Since 1978, there has been a remarkable diversification trend in rural China, characterized by an impressive development of rural enterprises. The main objective of this paper is to understand the forces driving this agro-industrial diversification with a particular attention paid to two categories of factors, agricultural income risks and institutional factors. Using a panel data of 28 Chinese provinces from 1986 to 2001, we show that the diversification decision is jointly determined by relative return between agriculture and rural industry, climatic risks, price volatility of agriculture products, ownership evolution of rural enterprises, and government's food security concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts of planning. They include "The Fall and Rise of the Local Community: A Comparative and Historical Perspective," by Hellmut Wollman, "The Compact Versus the Dispersed City: History of Planning Ideas on Sofia's Urban Form," by Sonia Hirt, and "A Paradigm for Practice," by Ronald D. Brunner.

The wide mechanization and escalation of the production constitutes a fundamental road for the ulterior development of the agriculture and the satisfaction of the growing necessities of the country in agricultural products. The park of agricultural machines and tractors with which it counts our today agriculture it is very aged and it has completed double their useful life of work for what is required of their more rational use, organizing it appropriately and having a system of facilities and qualified personnel for their exploitation, technical attendance and conservation. Is for that it becomes necessary to use organization methods that contribute to the most efficient use in the machinery. The machinery balance like organizational form of programming you can also use for the realization of the economic analysis since it contributes to the selection of the most rational technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]