1,721,175 research outputs found
Estimo e industria agroalimentare : una disciplina da tradizione per un settore in continuo cambiamento
No full textCashew, from seed to market : a review
No full textCashew is a tropical tree native to South America. Cashew was introduced in Asia and Africa by European explorers in the sixteenth century. The world production of cashew raw nuts reached 4.27 million tons in 2011. Vietnam is the top producer of raw nuts, and India is the first processor and exporter of processed nuts. The cashew market is expected to remain strong due to the high growth of production in some areas such as West Africa. For instance, a 40 % production increase has been observed in Nigeria over the last 5 years. There is also an increasing exploitation of high-value by-products, particularly those made of cashew nut shell liquid. Cashew production is potentially a major value for smallholder farmers from emerging countries. Despite the relevance of cashew production on the international markets and the potential for boosting rural development and reducing poverty, a complete review on cashew is missing. Therefore, we review here the cashew production chain. Our main conclusions are as follows: (1) several management practices, processing methods, and uses of products and by-products are published; (2) however, there is still a lack of knowledge due to a scattered research framework lacking integrated research programs; (3) smallholder farmers face major constraints limiting the development of cashew sector locally, ranging from difficult access to good planting material and training to lack of investment for innovating processing facilities; (4) among them, women, that account for up to 95 % of the workforce in the sector, receive lower wages and are subject to worse working conditions
The Environmental and Social Impact Assessment : a further step towards an integrated assessment process
No full textSince its introduction, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process has been subject to both critiques and adjustments with the aim of addressing the main issues emerging from its wide implementation. In this regard, one of the most active debates has focused on the weight allocated to the analysis of the social impacts of project implementation, often considered too limited. The Social Impact Assessment (SIA) was then launched but it has for long been considered as a component subordinate to the Environmental Impact Assessment. As a follow up to such a debate, the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) has been introduced and is now being widely applied by multilateral donors, international agencies and private lending institutions. It appears as a promising tool based on an integrated assessment where biophysical and social impacts of projects, programs and policy initiatives, are equally acknowledged and evaluated. However, it still misses a proper scientific foundation as, to date, few scientific publications on the theoretical base, opportunities and limits of such an assessment process have been made available. Therefore, the present paper aims to catch the attention of the scientific community on this gap in research, as well as to contribute to fill it. With this aim, a wide spectrum of grey literature documents has been analyzed in order to deduce the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment's core elements and advancements potentially provided in the framework of an increased awareness of environmental issues, no longer limited to biophysical components. While retracing the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Social Impact Assessment (SIA) co-evolution over time, as well as the outset of the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA), a profound change in the approach to environmental and social concerns arising from project implementation clearly emerged. Such a change, that occurred with a particular emphasis since the early 2000s, has led to the establishment of the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment as an integrated assessment process properly capturing the interrelationship between land and society
Drivers affecting revenues and premium price for producers in the Fairtrade certification system
No full textThis research develops from the collaboration between the no-profit organization Fairtrade Italia and the University of the Studies of Milan. The aim of the study is to provide an analysis as comprehensive as possible of the Fairtrade producers' organizations, focusing on the factors that lead to greater success in the participation in the certification system in terms of revenues. Furthermore, we also investigate the features that lead to a higher premium, the amount of money received on top of selling price for certified products to be spent in organization and community projects.
The novelty of this study is that it analyzes the Fairtrade affiliated organizations from the comprehensive dataset on worldwide certified producers collected by the Monitory, Evaluation and Learning program, that has never been analyzed before. The database comprises information on all the certified producer organizations, including every product and country; exogenous country-specific data has been added.
Data refer to 2013 and includes 878 producers' organizations, distributed in 77 developing countries. Using a linear regression model, the analysis highlights the roles of the duration of participation in Fairtrade, organization size, yields, labour intensity, percentage of females and degree of involvement in the network as crucial determinants.
Finding determinants of the revenues and the premium derived from Fairtrade more analytically, concerning the stated goals of Fairtrade and to the previous findings from the literature, can improve knowledge about the effectiveness and the impact of the Fairtrade system on producers' organizations and their communities
Funzioni Protettive Innovative di Grandi Aree di Rete (Wide Area Protection Systems) Instabilità di Tensione
No full textCon riferimento al problema dell'instabilità delle tensioni delle reti di trasmissione, viene proposta una soluzione protettiva di grandi aree di rete, molto efficace, capace di mantenere ai valori alti desiderati le tensioni, anche durante i transitori di disalimentazione dei carichi, annullando il rischio di black-out. La soluzione proposta, che ha caratteristiche di estrema semplicità funzionale e realizzativa, si avvale della presenza operativa del sistema gerarchico di controllo delle tensioni di rete che realizza le regolazioni Secondaria e Terziaria di tensione
Entering the Asian Developmental State in High-Tech and Service Industries: the Case of Italian SMEs in China and Japan
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