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Be local, buy local: The impact of pandemic experiences on domestic food and drink tourism
No full textThis paper explores the proposition that there is a growing potential for food tourism experiences, particularly for the domestic market, in post-pandemic Aotearoa New Zealand. It is the argument here that a changing perception of ‘local food’ as a tourist experience has been influenced by a number of factors, including the experiences of pandemic lockdowns and restrictions, a growing awareness of sustainability and ethical concerns around food production practices, and arguably a growing maturity and confidence in what makes New Zealand’s food culture unique. Utilising secondary sources and primary data from a number of recent surveys, the paper outlines three food tourism trends, with examples, that illustrate a potential growth in the role of food and drink tourism in Aotearoa New
Zealand
Proteins as fuzzy controllers: Auto tuning a biological fuzzy inference system to predict protein dynamics in complex biological networks
No full textBiological systems such as mammalian cell cycle are complex systems consisting of a large number of molecular species interacting in ways that produce complex nonlinear systems dynamics. Discrete models such as Boolean models and continuous models such as Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) have been widely used to study these systems. Boolean models are simple and can capture qualitative systems behaviour, but they cannot capture the continuous trends of protein concentrations, while ODE models capture continuous trends but require kinetics parameters that are limited. Further, as systems get larger, complexity of these models becomes an issue for parameterization, analysis and interpretation. Also, molecular systems operate under the conditions of uncertainty and noise and our understanding of molecular processes in general is more at a qualitative level characterised by vagueness, imprecision and ambiguity. Hence, as more data are generated, there is a greater need for simpler data driven methods that can approximate continuous system behaviour while representing vagueness and ambiguity without requiring kinetic parameters. Fuzzy inferencing is one such promising method with the ability to work with qualitative vague/imprecise biological knowledge. In this study, we propose a fuzzy inference system for representing continuous behaviour of proteins and apply to some key proteins in the mammalian cell cycle system. The methods we introduced here is novel to protein interaction systems and cell cycle proteins. Our study proposes a three-stage approach to develop fuzzy protein controllers. In stage one, protein system is studied for interactions. We studied some significant core controllers of mammalian cell cycle and their producers and degraders as presented in a published ODE model. Based on the observations from a dataset generated from it, we developed Fuzzy inference systems (FIS) in the second stage, that involved deriving fuzzy IF-THEN rules and their processing, and manually tuned the FIS to predict the dynamics of individual proteins. In stage three, we employed Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) for optimising the FIS to further enhance prediction accuracy. Systems dynamics simulation results of the optimised FIS models were in close agreement with the benchmark ODE model results. The results show that the FIS models provide a close approximation to the comprehensive benchmark model in robustly representing continuous protein dynamics while representing the control of protein behavior in an intuitive and transparent format without requiring kinetic parameters. Therefore, FIS models can be an alternative to ODEs in network modelling. Further, FIS models can be assembled to develop large complex systems without losing information or accuracy
Determinants of customer loyalty to online food service delivery: Evidence from Indonesia, Taiwan, and New Zealand
No full textThis study is dedicated to m-commerce and examines the key factors determining loyalty to online food delivery (OFD) services in Indonesia, Taiwan, and New Zealand, as these countries have faced varying degrees of pandemic severity. The data analysis using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) shows that the quality of both food and e-service, satisfaction, perceived value, and trust are significant predictors of loyalty in all countries. Food quality drives consumer loyalty, contentment, and perceived value in Indonesia and Taiwan, but e-service quality is the main determinant in New Zealand. These differences can be attributed to the status quo of the OFD service market in the three countries pre-Covid, cultural factors, the pandemic severity, and consumer access to other distribution channels. Best practice recommendations for marketing managers associated with OFD are presented
Measurement of nitrate leaching losses from lysimeters on a dairy farm following conversion from forestry
No full textNitrate (NO₃‾) leaching losses from lysimeters on a dairy farm were measured using an automated monitoring system designed to reduce labour and analysis costs. Nitrate leaching losses were measured under two soil types on farm (moderately deep and moderately shallow, stony silt loam) and under both urine patches and non-urine areas. The moderately deep soil leached significantly less NO₃‾-N than the relatively shallow soil in the 2016–17, 2017–18 and 2019–20 seasons. The NO₃‾-N leaching losses, under urine patches, were higher in autumn (168.5–190.1 kg NO₃‾-N ha‾¹) than in spring (3.7–4.9 kg NO₃‾-N ha‾¹) and summer (28.2–35.1 kg NO₃‾-N ha‾¹). Paddock scale NO₃‾ leaching losses were calculated using a semi-empirical model. The calculated NO₃‾-N leaching losses ranged from 18.3 to 47.3 kg NO₃‾-N ha‾¹ year‾¹, with a mean loss of 30.7 kg NO₃‾-N ha‾¹ year‾¹. These relatively low leaching losses from free-draining dairy pasture soils may be due to the recent conversion from forestry to dairy, with the soil having a high soil C:N ratio that may have caused increased immobilisation and subsequently lower NO₃‾-N leaching loss
Growing agri-heritage tourism in Africa: Challenges and opportunities
No full textAfrican nations have diverse and rich agricultural landscapes and systems, suggesting potential for a range of agri-heritage tourism offerings incorporating both tangible (e.g., built structures, landscape elements) and intangible elements (e.g., customs, beliefs, traditions, knowledge, language). This chapter considers the opportunities for growth of agri-heritage tourism in sub-Saharan Africa and provides two case studies of coffee tourism in Ethiopia and cocoa tourism in the Ivory Coast. Along with the above opportunities, we identify the potential for indigenous and traditional food crops to feature in agri-heritage tourism initiatives in Africa, capitalising on global trends in food production and consumption that have seen a revisiting of traditional sustainable approaches to producing food, as a means of coping with climate change and as an antidote to our widespread poisoned agri-industrial systems. Agri-heritage tourism may provide opportunities to diversify income streams, offering employment and income security for farms reliant upon unstable and unprofitable globally determined prices for their produce. However, barriers exist to the development of agri-heritage tourism, linked to a lack of inter-sectoral synergy between the agriculture and tourism sectors. Likewise, infrastructural, financing, product development, and marketing challenges exist, producing challenges for optimising livelihood benefits for the many small-holders who characterise the agriculture sector in Africa
Gender-sensitive Risks and Options Assessment for Decision making (ROAD) to support WiF2
Get PDFThe Gender-Sensitive Risks and Options Assessment for Decision Making (ROAD) to Support WiF-2 (ROAD migration project), a partnership coordinated by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Australian National University, American University Beirut, Lincoln University, and University of Dhaka, evaluated the ILO-DFID Partnership Programme on Fair Recruitment and Decent Work for Women Migrant Workers in South Asia and the Middle East (Work in Freedom, Phase 2 project [WiF-2]), which operated from 2018 to 2023. The WiF-2 project specifically aimed “to reduce vulnerability to trafficking and forced labour of women and girls across migration pathways leading to the care sector and textiles, clothing, leather and footwear industries (TCLFI) of South Asia and Arab States” (ToC WiF-2)
Severe climate change risks to food security and nutrition
Get PDFThis paper discusses severe risks to food security and nutrition that are linked to ongoing and projected climate change, particularly climate and weather extremes in global warming, drought, flooding, and precipitation. We specifically consider the impacts on populations vulnerable to food insecurity and malnutrition due to lower income, lower access to nutritious food, or social discrimination. The paper defines climate-related “severe risk” in the context of food security and nutrition, using a combination of criteria, including the magnitude and likelihood of adverse consequences, the timing of the risk and the ability to reduce the risk. Severe climate change risks to food security and nutrition are those which result, with high likelihood, in pervasive and persistent food insecurity and malnutrition for millions of people, have the potential for cascading effects beyond the food systems, and against which we have limited ability to prevent or fully respond. The paper uses internationally agreed definitions of risks to food security and nutrition to describe the magnitude of adverse consequences. Moreover, the paper assesses the conditions under which climate change-induced risks to food security and nutrition could become severe based on findings in the literature using different climate change scenarios and shared socioeconomic pathways. Finally, the paper proposes adaptation options, including institutional management and governance actions, that could be taken now to prevent or reduce the severe climate risks to future human food security and nutrition
China’s experience with mobile payments highlights the pros and cons of a cashless society
Get PDFAn increasing number of people are using mobile devices – their smartphone, a smartwatch or tablet – to pay for goods and services. Mobile devices allow people to complete transactions without using cash or a traditional bank card, making shopping quicker and easier
Incorporating plantain into ryegrass-white clover mixed sward for an economically and environmentally sustainable dairy system: Year one of a farm system study
Get PDFThe objective of this replicated farm system study was to investigate the effect of increasing proportion of plantain (Plantago lanceolata L. cv. Ecotain) in a perennial ryegrass/white clover (RGWC) mixed sward on farm productivity, profitability and environmental footprint over the 2021/22 production season. A total of 108 dairy cows were blocked into nine herds of 12 cows. The herds were randomly allocated into one of three replicated pasture treatments sown with an increasing plantain seed rate: (i) RGWC with nil plantain (PL0); (ii) RGWC+3 kg/ha plantain seed rate (PL3) or (iii) RGWC+6 kg/ha plantain seed rate (PL6). Farmlet milk and pasture production were measured, and data was used to estimate farm profitability and environmental footprint using FARMAX and OverseerEd software, respectively. Increasing plantain seed rate from 3 to 6 kg/ha increased sward content of plantain from 24% to 34% of DM in PL3 and PL6, respectively. Pasture production (average 12,988±473 kg DM/ha), total milk solids production (1,356±40 kg/ha) and farm profitability (4,347±354 NZ$/ha) were similar amongst treatments. Compared to PL0, estimated annual nitrogen leaching and nitrous oxide emissions were reduced by 21% and 30%, (P<0.001) and 4.3% and 6.0% (P<0.01) in PL3 and PL6, respectively. Results suggest that incorporation of plantain into dairy systems could be used as a strategy to reduce predicted environmental footprint while maintaining profitability. However, these results need to be confirmed over multiple production seasons
Drivers affecting biological invasions
No full textThe concept of direct and indirect drivers of change in nature has been a cornerstone in all the assessments led by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) to date (Díaz et al., 2015; IPBES, 2016a, 2018f, 2018e, 2018c, 2018d, 2019; Nelson et al., 2006), and the intention in this chapter is not to repeat past material pertaining to the status and trends in the drivers, but to synthesize information on the role of drivers of change in nature in affecting the biological invasion process. Chapter 3 therefore focuses on identifying how different drivers of change in nature affect the transport, introduction and establishment of invasive alien species (Glossary; Box 3.1). Chapter 3 builds on the status and trends of alien species, and the subset of these termed invasive alien species, documented in Chapter 2, with a more in-depth focus on establishing the drivers behind these patterns. The information provided in Chapter 3 contributes to the understanding of the underlying causes of the increase in invasive alien species globally (Chapter 2), the impacts of invasive alien species on nature, nature’s contributions to people and good quality of life (Glossary; Chapter 4) and underpins management actions (Glossary; Chapter 5) and policy options for the prevention and control of invasive alien species and their impacts (Glossary; Chapter 6)