建设国家热带作物工程技术研究中心的思考

针对热带作物生产发展现状,分析热带作物产业在我国农业生产中的重要性,探讨建立国家热带作物工程技术研究中心的必要性和思路。     

苏州市秸秆综合利用重点项目及实施保障对策

通过总结分析苏州农作物秸秆利用的现状和存在问题,围绕农业可持续发展和改善生态环境,把推进秸秆综合利用与社会主义新农村建设、农业增产增效和农民增收结合起来。提出了推广秸秆综合利用的重点项目,并探讨重点项目实施的保障措施与对策。     

Do stronger intellectual property rights promote seed exchange: evidence from U.S. seed exports?

With increased private investment in crop breeding research in the developed world, intellectual property rights have gained importance in seed sector. Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)‐plus provisions included in recent free trade agreements between the developed and developing countries show a tendency of the developed world to impose their high standards for protection of plant intellectual property on the developing world. While stronger intellectual property rights can increase international exchange in seed, market power effect can lead to a reduction in exports of seed to foreign markets. This article estimates the impact of intellectual property rights on U.S. seed exports. The estimation is performed at a crop level using Heckman selection model. The results reveal that the impact of intellectual property rights varies across different types of crops—open‐pollinated, genetically modified, and hybrid crops. While TRIPS provisions are important to facilitate transfer of genetically modified crops, they play a minor role for open‐pollinated and hybrid crops. The results also show that plant breeders’ rights envisioned by the UPOV system can be important to promote seed exchange when proper mechanisms are put in place to enforce these rights.     

Mobile Phones and Radios: Effects on Transactions Costs and Market Participation for Households in Northern Ghana

The literature on agricultural markets suggests that transactions costs are the main obstacles preventing households from participating in agricultural markets. We examine the impact of the recent massive penetration of information communication technologies (ICTs), particularly mobile phones and radios, in developing countries to investigate the role of information in economic transactions and participation in food crop markets. To fully capture market participation behaviours, the current theoretical framework on market participation and transactions costs is extended to include those households that sell and buy in the same time period. We correct for endogeneity and selectivity throughout our models. We used a novel dataset of 393 households in northern Ghana with detailed information on market transactions and ICTs usage. Results show that receiving market information via mobile phones has a positive and significant impact on market participation, with a greater impact for households with a surplus of food crops. We find that radios have a larger impact on the quantity traded. This may reflect the nature of mobile phones in reducing searching costs, whereas radios provide an updated and regular flow of information which affects the pattern of crops consumed and sold. We also emphasise that the most significant factor is how ICTs are used, rather than their ownership.     

Analyzing crop change scenario with the SmartScape™ spatial decision support system

Agricultural land use is increasingly changing due to different anthropogenic activities. A combination of economic, socio-political, and cultural factors exerts a direct impact on agricultural changes. This study aims to illustrate how stakeholders and policymakers can take advantage of a web-based spatial decision support system (SDSS), namely SmartScape™ to either test existing crop change policies or produce effective crop change decisions using tradeoff analysis. We addressed the consequences of two common crop change scenarios for Dane county in Wisconsin, United States, (a) replacing perennial energy crops with annual energy crops and (b) replacing annual energy crops with perennial energy crops. The results suggested that converting areas under grass and alfalfa production that were located on high quality soil and flat slope to corn promoted a net-income and availability of gross biofuel. Additionally, the model outcome proposed that converting areas under corn and soy production that were located on high slope to grass promoted net-energy, phosphorus loading, soil loss, soil carbon sequestration, nitrous oxide emission, grassland bird habitat, pollinator abundance, and biocontrol. Therefore, SmartScape™ can assist strategic crop change policy by comparing the tradeoff among ecosystem services to ensure that crop change policies have outcomes that are agreeable to a diversity of policymakers.     

陕西省主要粮食作物生产成本收益研究——以小麦、玉米为例

陕西省是我国的农业大省,粮食作物的生产成本和收益与农民收入直接相关,对农村经济的可持续发展具有重要影响。文章分析了陕西省主要粮食作物的种植现状,以小麦、玉米为例探究了主要粮食作物的生产成本收益,并对生产中存在的问题及潜力进行了详细分析,结果表明,尽管实施了多项惠农政策,粮食作物生产仍表现为成本高,收益低,农民播种积极性不高;粮食生产面临形势严峻,但陕西省粮食生产有很大的潜力可以挖掘。该文还提出了提高农民耕种积极性、提高粮食作物单产水平、实现农业产业化等对策建议,以期为提高粮食作物产量和品质,提高生产成本收益提供一定依据。     

Abandoned agricultural land and its potential for short rotation woody crops in Latvia

Abandoned agricultural land in Latvia offers high potential for renewable energy production, especially for short rotation woody crops (SRWC). The objective of this study is to understand the main reasons why agricultural lands remain abandoned, and whether these reasons could pose any obstacles to the establishment of SRWC. The study was carried out in the Latgale planning region, with estimated 75,530 ha of abandoned agricultural land suitable for SRWC. Qualitative methods of data collection and analysis were used to study the phenomenon. The results show that the primary reason for agricultural land abandonment is the absentee landowners who do not reside in the municipality (e.g., heirs, urban dwellers, intermediaries, and/or investors). Other reasons are: (1) perception of a greater future value from other types of land use; (2) environmental and biophysical characteristics of the land; (3) policy obstacles; (4) social behavior; and, (5) financial and economic constraints. The study also reveals that the establishment of SRWC on abandoned agricultural lands will depend on policies guiding land acquisition and agricultural land use, as well as social and economic policies that encourage small holder production, especially in Latgale.     

The Lived Experience of Food Sovereignty: Gender,Indigenous Crops and Small‐Scale Farming in Mtubatuba,South Africa

Food sovereignty has become a powerful concept to critique the dominant global food regime. Although it has not taken root in South Africa as fiercely as elsewhere, we use this concept to explore how one small‐scale farmer seeks to wean herself from the dominant food system in the small town of Mtubatuba, KwaZulu‐Natal. Using ethnographic methods and in‐depth interviews about this single intense and extreme case, we explore this farmer's commitment and argue that it constitutes what we call the ‘lived experience of food sovereignty’. If food sovereignty is concerned with small‐farmer control over decisions about food cultivation, distribution and consumption, we examine this farmer's praxis and explore the obstacles she faces. These include gendered and racialized agrarian questions, land struggles, social reproduction and perceptions of her indigenous crops. We also examine the networks, knowledge, systems and methods that have allowed her to cultivate her self‐reliance.     

天祝县民族地区特色农作物比较优势实证分析

文章采用规模比较优势指数、单产比较优势指数以及综合比较优势指数等方法,对天祝县2003~2012年种植面积较大且地域特色明显的3种主要农作物比较优势进行了横向和纵向比较,并与市内其余县域进行了差异比较分析,以期掌握天祝县主要农作物比较优势状况以及发展变化趋势。结果表明:天祝县马铃薯和油菜具有明显的比较优势,且优势十分明显,可以大力发展;蔬菜作为天祝县一个具有后发优势的产业,规模比较优势明显,单产比较优势和综合比较优势接近于1,具有潜在的发展潜力。建议天祝县特色农作物的发展,要紧紧抓住国家支持藏区建设和建立丝绸之路新经济带的历史机遇,抓住天祝县被列为全国北方油菜优势区和西北马铃薯优势产区的有力契机,走稳定规模优势、扩大产量优势、强化产品质量的良性循环发展之路。同时,要根据天祝县优势农作物产区属于复合型区域的特点,协调各种优势作物的种植规模,形成资源和要素配置合理的配置,在产业发展中要充分发挥高原气候资源优势,全面提高优势农作物的生产效率和产品质量,以实现民族地区特色农业产业健康可持续发展。     

Implementing the water framework directive in Denmark – Lessons on agricultural measures from a legal and regulatory perspective

One of the major challenges in the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) is how to address diffuse agricultural pollution of the aquatic environment. In Denmark the implementation of agricultural measures has been fraught with difficulty in the form of delays and legal proceedings, despite an ambitious starting point. Why has the implementation of the WFD been so difficult? Based on an analysis of three core components (effectiveness, scale and legal issues) of three agricultural measures (riparian zones, reduced management of streams and catch crops), the paper argues that the legal and regulatory complexity of adopting mandatory land use related measures at the national level to achieve site-specific environmental objectives was underestimated in a top-down political process. The ambitious mandatory policy measures, which added to existing high regulation pressure, led to regulatory challenges, such as possible violation of private property rights raising questions about the actual environmental effects at local level. Consequently, political acceptability and legitimacy of the agricultural measures were undermined, resulting in a gradual withdrawal of the measures and a policy failure. It is argued that the adoption of more flexible measures to be implemented at the local level could have resulted in fewer difficulties from an economic and legal point of view as measures could have been applied where there was a clear environmental benefit, and possibly also at a lower cost.