10 pages, Enormous quantities of data are generated through social and online media in the era of Web 2.0. Understanding consumer perceptions or demand efficiently and cost effectively remains a focus for economists, retailer/consumer sciences, and production industries. Most of the efforts to understand demand for food products rely on reports of past market performance along with survey data. Given the movement of content-generation online to lay users via social media, the potential to capture market-influencing shifts in sentiment exists in online data. This analysis presents a novel approach to studying consumer perceptions of production system attributes using eggs and laying hen housing, which have received significant attention in recent years. The housing systems cage-free and free-range had the greatest number of online hits in the searches conducted, compared with the other laying hen housing types. Less online discussion surrounded enriched cages, which were found by other methods/researchers to meet many key consumer preferences. These results, in conjunction with insights into net sentiment and words associated with different laying hen housing in online and social media, exemplify how social media listening may complement traditional methods to inform decision-makers regarding agribusiness marketing, food systems, management, and regulation. Employing web-derived data for decision-making within agrifood firms offers the opportunity for actionable insights tailored to individual businesses or products.
21 pages, via Online Journal, This paper explores the role of regulation and legislation on influencing the development and diffusion of technologies and methods of crop production. To do this, the change in pesticide registration under European Regulation 1107/2009 ‘Placing Plant Protection Products on the Market’ was followed through the UK’s agricultural system of innovation. Fieldwork included: a series of interviews conducted with scientists, agronomists and industry organisations; a programme of visiting agricultural events; as well as sending an electronic survey to British potato growers. The innovation system is noted to have made the legislation less restrictive than originally proposed. The most notable system response to the legislation is the adjustment of agrochemical company pesticide discovery strategy and their expansion into biologically derived treatments. There have also been other innovation responses: agricultural seed companies have been breeding in pathogen resistance in their cultivars; agricultural consultancies are prepared to recommend pathogen-resistant seeds; scientists are using the change as justification for adopting their solutions; the agricultural levy boards funded research into off-label pesticide uses; and producers, potato growers in particular, have been seeking advice, but not changing their growing practices.
Via online issue. 3 pages., Summary of panel discussion at a Virtual Town Hall meeting of the Produce Marketing Association. Panelists noted how greenhouse technologies can soften the blow of climate change.
7 pages, via Online journal, Hair fescue (Festuca filiformis) is a tuft-forming perennial grass that reduces yields in lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium) fields. Nonbearing year foramsulfuron applications suppress hair fescue, but there is interest in increasing suppression through foramsulfuron use in conjunction with fall-applied herbicides. The objective of this research was to determine the main and interactive effects of fall-bearing year herbicide applications and spring-nonbearing year foramsulfuron applications on hair fescue. The experiment was a 5 × 2 factorial arrangement of fall-bearing year herbicide (none, terbacil, pronamide, glufosinate, dichlobenil) and spring-nonbearing year foramsulfuron application (0, 35 g·ha−1) arranged in a randomized complete block design at lowbush blueberry fields in Portapique and Stewiacke, Nova Scotia, Canada. Spring-nonbearing year foramsulfuron applications did not reduce total tuft density or consistently reduce flowering tuft density, flowering tuft inflorescence number, or flowering tuft seed production. Fall-bearing year pronamide applications reduced hair fescue density for the 2-year production cycle, although additional bearing year density reductions occurred when pronamide was followed by spring-nonbearing year foramsulfuron applications at Stewiacke. Fall-bearing year dichlobenil applications reduced total and flowering tuft density at each site, although reductions in flowering tuft inflorescence number and seed production were most consistent when followed by spring-nonbearing year foramsulfuron applications at Stewiacke. Suppression extended into the bearing year at each site, and dichlobenil should be examined further for hair fescue control. Fall-bearing year glufosinate applications reduced hair fescue total tuft density at each site and flowering tuft density and flowering tuft seed production at Stewiacke. Fall-bearing year glufosinate applications followed by spring-nonbearing year foramsulfuron applications also reduced nonbearing year flowering tuft inflorescence number and bearing year hair fescue seedling density at Stewiacke, indicating that this treatment may reduce hair fescue seedling recruitment at some sites. Fall-bearing year terbacil applications did not suppress hair fescue and are not recommended for hair fescue management in lowbush blueberry.
17pgs, Despite the central role of seafood in Japanese cuisine, domestic fisheries are facing a severe crisis. Based on anthropological field research in fishing communities in southwestern Japan as well as on a sampling of cultural representations of fish, this contribution examines the changing cultural and socio-economic meanings and matter of fish in Japanese seafood assemblages: from sentient beings and commons cohabitants under existential threat from anthropogenic environmental change to their use as food for human consumption and their role in the livelihoods of fishers and coastal communities. The analysis finds a growing polarisation in the Japanese seafood sector as the cyborg fish of highly-processed food products and globally traded commodities inundate markets and dinner plates, while locally caught animals turn from basic foodstuff into folklorist stars of a vanishing rurality, a symbol of authenticity and national identity advertised as cultural commodities in romanticising campaigns to revitalise rural areas.
10 pages., Via online resource., Many smallholder farmers in developing countries grow multiple crop species on their farms, maintaining de facto crop diversity. Rarely do agricultural development strategies consider this crop diversity as an entry point for fostering agricultural innovation. This paper presents a case study, from an agricultural research-for-development project in northern Ghana, which examines the relationship between crop diversity and self-consumption of food crops, and cash income from crops sold by smallholder farmers in the target areas. By testing the presence and direction of these relationships, it is possible to assess whether smallholder farmers may benefit more from a diversification or a specialization agricultural development strategy for improving their livelihoods. Based on a household survey of 637 randomly selected households, we calculated crop diversity as well as its contribution to self-consumption (measured as imputed monetary value) and to cash income for each household. With these data we estimated a system of three simultaneous equations. Results show that households maintained high levels of crop diversity: up to eight crops grown, with an-average of 3.2 per household, and with less than 5% having a null or very low level of crop diversity. The value of crop species used for self-consumption was on average 55% higher than that of crop sales. Regression results show that crop diversity is positively associated with self-consumption of food crops, and cash income from crops sold. This finding suggests that increasing crop diversity opens market opportunities for households, while still contributing to self-consumption. Given these findings, crop diversification seems to be more beneficial to these farmers than specialization. For these diversified farmers, or others in similar contexts, interventions that assess and build on their de facto crop diversity are probably more likely to be successful.