1,720,967 research outputs found
Food security and land grabbing in low-income countries of the Sub-Saharan Africa
Full text linkThe fight against hunger and poverty has long been at the heart of international policies in favour of Less Developed Countries. The first two Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of 2030 Agenda strategy are just "No poverty" and "Zero Hunger". Notwithstanding the results achieved in the recent past, in the poorest and low-income Countries, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, lots of people continue to suffer from hunger and poverty. In these Countries, the perspective for economic growth and development of agricultural productivity, as currently measured, is not able to assure the elimination of poverty and hunger. These problems will probably tend to focus right in this area, where the maximum demographic increase is also forecast. Despite of the increase of agricultural productivity is paramount for food security, in the Poorest Countries it is, up to now, strictly linked to farm new lands. In the last years, in the Sub-Saharan Africa low income Countries, investments in new lands have been affected by Land Grabbing. The aim of this paper is to verify whether and to what extent the Land Grabbing operations have affected both the variation of agricultural land and the development of agricultural activities for food security in the Countries concerned
Limits and potential of organic farming towards a more sustainable European agri-food system
Full text linkPurpose: The aim of this paper is to assess whether the current European target to increase the areas under organic farming to 25% by 2030 is attainable and whether the simple increase in areas under organic farming may be sufficient to improve the sustainability of European agriculture. Design/methodology/approach: The analysis has been carried out through a simple data processing related to areas under organic farming, for the period 2012–2020 (Eurostat database), in order to highlight the trends of areas under organic farming and to verify whether the annual average change rates may be compatible with the stated target. Findings: The analysis showed that organic farming has a productive weight not corresponding to the amount on the total of the areas under cultivation and a small impact on the total of food consumption. It is a plausible hypothesis, the one that shows the increase in areas under organic farming will engage forms of agriculture and farms that, already, are more sustainable, so the achievement of 25% target will not particularly impact the European potential productive and the less environmental sustainable forms of agriculture. Originality/value: This paper contributes to the debate, involving scientific community, policy maker and civil society, about the real contribution of organic farming to sustainability, and it will be developed in future research
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Produzione idroponica di pomodoro: innovazione ed efficienza per uno sviluppo sostenibile. Caso studio di un’azienda agricola.
No full textLa produzione di pomodoro in Italia nel 2016 ha registrato un valore economico pari a 1,6 miliardi di euro,
confermando il settore come uno dei punti di forza dell’agroalimentare italiano. La superficie totale coltivata
a livello nazionale raggiunge circa 68.640 ettari, concentrati maggiormente nel Nord nel Paese, ove le
produzioni sono destinate per lo più alla trasformazione e all’export.
Parallelamente, tale filiera registra un elevato impatto ambientale, a causa dell’utilizzo di risorse naturali,
pesticidi e fertilizzanti impiegati durante la fase di coltivazione. L’impronta ecologica di un sistema di
coltivazione di pomodoro convenzionale, biologico e in serra registra un impatto rispettivamente pari a
19.4062 metri quadri per un chilogrammo di prodotto per anno (m2/kg/a), 13.4639 m2/kg/a e 31.6018
m2/kg/a. Per perseguire un modello di sviluppo sostenibile secondo un approccio integrato nelle quattro
differenti dimensioni (economica, ambientale, sociale ed istituzionale) è necessario che venga al contempo
ridotta la quantità di risorse naturali impiegate ed ottimizzata la produzione, per assicurare qualità di prodotto
e di processo nelle fasi di coltivazione, trasformazione e commercializzazione del bene.
Ciò che permette la riduzione degli output negativi ambientali correlati al settore agro-alimentare è
l’innovazione tecnologica sostenibile. In tale categoria, si posiziona la tecnica di coltivazione idroponica
(anche conosciuta come idrocoltura o coltivazione fuori suolo), un metodo che utilizza un substrato inerte
come lana di roccia, argilla, perlite, vermiculite in alternativa al suolo. La coltivazione idroponica può essere
suddivisa in due categorie, sistemi chiusi nei quali la soluzione nutritiva fornisce alle piante in modo
continuo i nutrienti di cui ha bisogno; sistemi aperti nei quali la soluzione nutritiva non viene riutilizzata. I
sistemi chiusi sono maggiormente efficienti per il contenimento degli sprechi di acqua e risultano dunque più
sostenibili, anche se la soluzione nutritiva deve essere sottoposta a maggiori controlli in termini di volume,
pH, sostanze nutritive contenute e depurazione. Ogni soluzione infatti deve essere creata specificatamente
per il tipo di coltura che si intende produrre, anche se aspetti generali quali qualità dell’acqua da impiegare,
contenuto standard di elementi di base come calcio e magnesio, contenuto standard di micronutrienti come
ferro e sodio. L'agricoltura idroponica rappresenta perciò un importante elemento per la produzione agricola,
non solo per disponibilità, ma anche per la qualità controllata. Il presente lavoro ha l’obiettivo di analizzare
attraverso la metodologia del Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) un caso italiano di coltivazione idroponica di
pomodoro per studiarne variabili quantitative quali produttività, redditività e impatto ambientale. L’LCA ci
permette di valutare gli eventuali vantaggi e svantaggi economici ed ambientali in funzione all’utilizzo di
risorse naturali e calcolare l’effettiva resa delle coltivazioni idroponiche rispetto alle tecniche di coltivazione
convenzionale
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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