Search

There are more than 40,000 agricultural cooperatives in Europe with 9 million farmer members and over 600,000 workers. Due to the democratic nature of the cooperative form, it is assumed agricultural cooperatives empower their members and allow small farmers to have a stronger voice in the supply chain. However, much of the academic literature on agricultural cooperatives focuses on the economic analysis of their performance, while hardly any research has been done on analysing the impact that policy, long supply chains and the internationalisation of the food system have on members and labour dimensions. This article contributes to covering this gap by analysing how agricultural cooperatives are being shaped and misshaped by European farming policy and the architecture of global food systems. Following Schneiberg's thesis on social movements being a condition for processes of diffusion and mutualism, this article reflects on critical issues in organisational studies related to agricultural cooperatives, the cooperative movement and sustainable food systems. Case studies from Spain and United Kingdom are used to illustrate the Northern and Southern European perspective. The concept of deviant mainstreaming is applied to discuss how agricultural cooperatives are being co-opted and losing their transformative potential as a result of pressures to remain competitive, with effects on members, social justice and the environment. The findings suggest policy changes at the European level, and the increasing internationalisation of the food system is fuelling the amalgamation of agricultural cooperatives, which is threatening their local embeddedness and creating organisational tensions between the local, co-operative space and the global, capitalist space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spread of economic activity in the Oviedo region in northern Spain in recent decades has deeply altered the territorial model. The traditional dichotomy between rural and urban landscapes is blurring, and many functions are being relocated in formerly rural areas. The construction of motorways, and other transport infrastructures, accompanied by the triggering action of both public and private investment, lax legal frameworks, and the amount of flat land, are the main factors that explain the process. Using historic aerial photographs and data gathered by public institutions, this article offers thematic maps to understand the phases and distribution of the spatial diffusion process. The spatial-temporal sequence of landscape changes helps us understand the processes of development in a peri-urban landscape characterised by a diffusion of functions and its role in landscape configuration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to model electric power consumption during a period of economic crisis, characterised by declining gross domestic product. A novel aspect of this study is its use of a Gamma-type diffusion process for short and medium-term forecasting – other techniques that have been used to describe such consumption patterns are not valid in this situation. In this study, we consider a new extension of the stochastic Gamma diffusion process by introducing time functions (exogenous factors) that affect its trend. This extension is defined in terms of Kolmogorov backward and forward equations. After obtaining the transition probability density function and the moments (specifically, the trend function), the inference on the process parameters is obtained by discrete sampling of the sample paths. Finally, this stochastic process is applied to model total net electricity consumption in Spain, when affected by the following set of exogenous factors: Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF) and Final Domestic Consumption (FDC). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents results of the media competence of Spanish youth. The methodological tool used, a sociological survey, was created from proposals by more than 50 recognized experts in this field. It is focused on six major dimensions: languages, technologies, interaction processes, production and diffusion processes, aesthetics and ideology and values. The study population is 1,430 youngsters. The results are significant: Spanish youth score poorly in five of the six dimensions, the exception being the technology dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to study the diffusion of diesel engines in the Spanish fisheries sector by revealing the factors that had a bearing on that process from a dual perspective: at aggregate level and at company level. The diffusion process for diesel technology follows an S-shapped curve, involving a gradual process. A range of varying factors explains the slow diffusion of diesel at the sector level, related to both demand and supply, and factors as those related to the characteristics of innovation and the evolution of older technology. A model is subsequently proposed that details the adoption of innovations and the characteristics of companies. The results indicate that the parameters of both the recipient company—size, location and organizational structure—and its technology provider help to explain the probability of this deployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: As sorption data obtained from batch tests are often used to estimate pollutant transport in unsaturated soils, comparison between sorption data obtained in the two conditions is required to ensure a correct risk assessment. With this aim, radiostrontium and radiocesium apparent diffusion coefficients (D a) were quantified in nine unsaturated soils, and the derived distribution coefficients (K d) were compared with K d data from batch experiments. The D a(Sr) and the D a(Cs) ranged from 1.8×10−11 to 1.5×10−10 m2 s−1, and from 1.0×10−13 to 5.9×10−11 m2 s−1, respectively. The D a(Sr) varied according to both soil packing parameters and properties governing Sr interaction. For Cs, the soil sorption properties explained the variation on D a(Cs). The K d values derived from D a (from 0.014 to 1.8Lkg−1 for Sr; from 0.55 to 942Lkg−1 for Cs) were lower than from batch tests (from 1 to 97Lkg−1 for Sr; from 10 to 14,600Lkg−1 for Cs), thus indicating that batch data may not accurately describe radionuclide transport in unsaturated soils. However, the two sets of data correlated well, thus suggesting that radionuclide transport can be estimated from batch tests, which are faster than diffusion experiments. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this study, we propose a methodology to analyse the gradual secular trends present in the time evolution of certain endogenous variables, which are of particular interest in environmental research. This methodology is based on modelling such variables by nonhomogeneous stochastic diffusion processes, the trend functions of which may be made to depend on other, exogenous, variables, which are controllable and which affect and model, in turn, the possible irregularities of such trends. The methodology is applied to analyse the evolution of the emission of CO2 in Spain, and it is shown that the evolution of the Spanish GDP affects the trend component. These circumstances are considered in the context of Spain’s non-compliance with the Kyoto protocol on controlling the emission of greenhouse gases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows the pattern of diffusion of a tool of protest – blank and null voting (BNV)– in the context of Spanish national elections. It shows how the 2004 protest mobilization by Batasuna (a Basque nationalist party) predicts null voting by identifying the relationship of this form of protest with both the level of grievance of the population and the political resources of the mobilizers. The paper then demonstrates that this large and visible use of a protest tactic is followed by a heterogeneous diffusion process after the main mobilized protest event and beyond the supporters of the original mobilizer. In the 2008 national election, across Spain, citizens with grievances toward the political system and, most importantly, with political affinity with the initiators were the ones to update their individual protest repertoire with this electoral protest tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]