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Drivers of decoupling and recoupling of crop and livestock systems at farm and territorial scales
No full textCrop and livestock production have become spatially decoupled in existing commercial agricultural regimes throughout the world. These segregated high input production systems contribute to some of the world’s most pressing sustainability challenges, including climate change, nutrient imbalances, water pollution, biodiversity decline, and increasingly precarious rural livelihoods. There is substantial evidence that by closing the loop in nutrient and energy cycles, recoupling crop and livestock systems at farm and territorial scales can help reduce the environmental externalities associated with conventional commercial farming without declines in profitability or yields. Yet such “integrated” crop and livestock systems remain rare as a proportion of global agricultural area. Based on an interdisciplinary workshop and additional literature review, we provide a comprehensive historical and international perspective on why integrated crop and livestock systems have declined in most regions and what conditions have fostered their persistence and reemergence in others. We also identify levers for encouraging the reemergence of integrated crop and livestock systems worldwide. We conclude that a major disruption of the current regime would be needed to foster crop-livestock reintegration, including a redesign of research programs, credit systems, payments for ecosystem services, insurance programs, and food safety regulations to focus on whole farm outcomes and the creation of a circular economy. An expansion of the number of integrated crop and livestock systems field trials and demonstrations and efforts to brand integrated crop and livestock systems as a form of sustainable agriculture through the development of eco-labels could also improve adoption, but would likely be unsuccessful at encouraging wide-scale change without a more radical transformation of the research and policy landscape.</p
Evidence on effects of plant pests on IPPC strategic objectives and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms by the SPS community : Report based on literature review and interviews with SPS organisations
No full textThis report is commissioned by the International Plant Protection Commission (IPPC) and is the result of a literature review on the effects of plant pests on the IP strategic objectives, as well as interviews and document review on the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) mechanisms of the SPS community. The review shows that there is evidence that the prevention of pests contributes to IPPC’s strategic objectives: enhancing global food security and sustainable agriculture productivity; protecting the environment; and facilitating safe trade, development, and economic growth. However, the context is very important and requires context specific interventions. In particular low-income countries struggle to reduce plant pests and need support in this to help them to also contribute to these overarching objectives. The review also shows that the different SPS organisations have different mechanisms in place for monitoring and evaluation, and these are generally not embedded in a formal monitoring and evaluation system. There is need for more attention to monitoring and evaluation in support of adaptive management of the SPS organisations, that work in often complex environments
The influence of multi-stakeholder platforms on farmers' innovation and rural development in emerging economies : a systematic literature review
No full textPurpose: Despite the increasing interest on multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs) as novel organizational forms addressing grand challenges surrounding agri-food systems, the literature on how MSPs influence farmers' innovation remains scattered across sub-disciplines and geographies and, overall, of limited help for informing managerial and policy action and reflection. Design/methodology/approach: To address this gap, this systematic literature review (SRL) provides an overview on what MSPs are and how they influence farmers' innovation in emerging economies. Findings: The selected sample included n = 44 publications in 2004–2018, focussing for 70% on Africa, with minor shares in Latin America and Asia, and with a strong theoretical and methodological segmentation across five sub-disciplines (agribusiness management, agricultural economics, agricultural innovation systems, agricultural research for development and public policy and governance). Overall, this SRL leads to three findings. First, a key distinctive organizational feature of MSPs relative to other novel organizational forms in emerging economies entails the presence of a virtual and/or physical interface spanning across multiple heterogeneous stakeholders. Second, in relation to their impact pathways towards farmers' innovation, MSPs tend to achieve different intermediary outcomes and levels of innovation depending on their organizational goals and activities. Research limitations/implications: These findings also reveal four key limitations of the extant MSP literature – namely, disciplinary silos thinking, linear thinking, limited focus on the role of informal institutions and little emphasis on power dynamics – which could inform managers and policy makers on how MSPs could influence farmers; innovation. Originality/value: This study offers a SLR with the goal of providing practitioners and academics with first, a holistic view of the available research on the impact of MSPs on farmers innovation, and second, propose an impact pathway framework to understand how and under which circumstances MSPs support farmers' innovation given their functioning, structure and the governance mechanisms of MSPs.</p
Caretta – A multiple protein structure alignment and feature extraction suite
Get PDFThe vast number of protein structures currently available opens exciting opportunities for machine learning on proteins, aimed at predicting and understanding functional properties. In particular, in combination with homology modelling, it is now possible to not only use sequence features as input for machine learning, but also structure features. However, in order to do so, robust multiple structure alignments are imperative. Here we present Caretta, a multiple structure alignment suite meant for homologous but sequentially divergent protein families which consistently returns accurate alignments with a higher coverage than current state-of-the-art tools. Caretta is available as a GUI and command-line application and additionally outputs an aligned structure feature matrix for a given set of input structures, which can readily be used in downstream steps for supervised or unsupervised machine learning. We show Caretta's performance on two benchmark datasets, and present an example application of Caretta in predicting the conformational state of cyclin-dependent kinases.</p
Detecting Unsigned Physical Road Incidents from Driver-view Images
No full textSafety on roads is of uttermost importance, especially in the context of autonomous vehicles. A critical need is to detect and communicate disruptive incidents early and effectively. In this paper we propose a system based on an off-the-shelf deep neural network architecture that is able to detect and recognize types of unsigned (non-placarded, such as traffic signs), physical (visible in images) road incidents. We develop a taxonomy for unsigned physical incidents to provide a means of organizing and grouping related incidents. After selecting eight target types of incidents, we collect a dataset of twelve thousand images gathered from publicly-available web sources. We subsequently fine-tune a convolutional neural network to recognize the eight types of road incidents. The proposed model is able to recognize incidents with a high level of accuracy (higher than 90%). We further show that while our system generalizes well across spatial context by training a classifier on geostratified data in the United Kingdom (with an accuracy of over 90%), the translation to visually less similar environments requires spatially distributed data collection.</p
Neighbourhood fast food exposure and consumption: the mediating role of neighbourhood social norms
Get PDFBackground: The association between the residential fast food environment and diet has gained growing attention. However, why the food environment affects food consumption is under-examined. This study aimed to investigate neighbourhood social norms with respect to fast food consumption as a potential mediating pathway between residential fast food outlet exposure and residents’ fast food consumption.Methods: A correlational study was conducted in which a nationwide sample of 1038 respondents living across The Netherlands completed a survey. Respondents reported their fast food consumption (amount/week) as well as perceived descriptive and injunctive norms regarding fast food consumption in their neighbourhood. Fast food outlet exposure was measured by the average count of fast food outlets within a 400 m walking distance buffer around the zip-codes of the respondents, using a retail outlet database. Regression models were used to assess associations between residential fast food outlet exposure, fast food consumption, and social norm perceptions, and a bootstrapping procedure was used to test the indirect -mediation- effect. Separate analyses were performed for descriptive norms and injunctive norms.Results: There was no overall or direct association between residential fast food outlet exposure and residents’ fast food consumption. However, fast food outlet exposure was positively associated with neighbourhood social norms (descriptive and injunctive) regarding fast food consumption, which in turn were positively associated with the odds of consuming fast food. Moreover, results of the bootstrapped analysis provided evidence of indirect effects of fast food outlet exposure on fast food consumption, via descriptive norms and injunctive norms.Conclusions: In neighbourhoods with more fast food outlets, residents were more likely to perceive fast food consumption in the neighbourhood as more common and appropriate. In turn, stronger neighbourhood social norms were associated with higher fast food consumption. Acknowledging the correlational design, this study is the first that implies that neighbourhood social norms may be a mediating pathway in the relation between the residential fast food environment and fast food consumption. Future research may examine the role of neighbourhood social norms in other contexts and explore how the changing food environment may shift our consumption norms
Habitatrichtlijnrapportage 2019: Annex D Habitattypen : Achtergronddocument
Get PDFThis document describes the concepts, data and methods used in the 2019 report (under Article 17 of the Habitats Directive) on the conservation status of habitat types for the parameters range, area, structure and functions, and future prospects. The ranges of nearly all habitat types have not changed. No reliable, updated data on area were available for most habitat types. The methodology for assessing structure and functions has been thoroughly revised to accommodate long-term monitoring data and meet the new reporting formats. The European Commission has also introduced a new method for assessing future prospects. The report presents the results and indicates where the methods and data can be improved
Powering and puzzling: climate change adaptation policies in Bangladesh and India
Get PDFSouth Asia is a region uniquely vulnerable to climate-related impacts. Climate change adaptation in India and Bangladesh evolves using powering and puzzling approaches by policy actors. We seek to answer the question: how do powering and puzzling approaches influence the climate change adaptation policy design and implementation processes in Bangladesh and India? We adopted two strategies to collect and analyze data: semi-structured interviews and discourse analysis. We found that adaptation policymaking is largely top-down, amenable to techno-managerial solutions, and not inclusive of marginalized actors. In Bangladesh, power interplays among ministerial agencies impair the policy implementation process and undermine the success of puzzling. Local-scale agencies do not have enough authority or power to influence the overall implementation processes occurring at higher scales of governance. The powering of different actors in Bangladesh is visible through a duality of mandates and a lack of integration of climate adaptation strategies in different government ministries. The powering aspect of India’s various adaptation policies is the lack of collective puzzling around the question of differentiated vulnerability by axes of social difference. Paradoxically, India has a puzzling approach of hiding behind the poor in international negotiations. Moving forward, both countries should strive to have more inclusive and equitable adaptation policymaking processes that enable the participation of marginalized populations and represent their anxieties and aspirations. Identifying policy-relevant insights from South Asia using the powering and puzzling approaches can foster adaptation policy processes that facilitate empowerment, the missing piece of the adaptation policymaking puzzle.</p
Pre-Columbian soil fertilization and current management maintain food resource availability in old-growth Amazonian forests
Get PDFAims: The extent and persistence of pre-Columbian human legacies in old-growth Amazonian forests are still controversial, partly because modern societies re-occupied old settlements, challenging the distinction between pre- and post-Columbian legacies. Here, we compared the effects of pre-Columbian vs. recent landscape domestication processes on soils and vegetation in two Amazonian regions. Methods: We studied forest landscapes at varying distances from pre-Columbian and current settlements inside protected areas occupied by traditional and indigenous peoples in the lower Tapajós and the upper-middle Madeira river basins. By conducting 69 free-listing interviews, participatory mappings, guided-tours, 27 forest inventories, and soil analysis, we assessed the influences of pre-Columbian and current activities in soils and plant resources surrounding the settlements. Results: In both regions, we found that pre-Columbian villages were more densely distributed across the landscape than current villages. Soil nutrients (mainly Ca and P) were higher closer to pre-Columbian villages but were generally not related to current villages, suggesting past soil fertilization. Soil charcoal was frequent in all forests, suggesting frequent fire events. The density of domesticated plants used for food increased in phosphorus enriched soils. In contrast, the density of plants used for construction decreased near current villages. Conclusions: We detected a significant effect of past soil fertilization on food resources over extensive areas, supporting the hypothesis that pre-Columbian landscape domestication left persistent marks on Amazonian landscapes. Our results suggest that a combination of pre-Columbian phosphorus fertilization with past and current management drives plant resource availability in old-growth forests.</p
