农村和农业节能减排大有可为

<正>农业既是能源的消费者,也应是能源的生产者;农村既是污染物的排放源,也应是污染物的消纳地;农民既是节能减排的受益者,也应是节能减排的参与者。发展农村可再生能源,应用高效低排的技术,治理农业面源污染,不仅能够缓解国家能源压力、优化能源结构、保障国家能源安全,而且可以有效减少污染物排放,改善农村生产生活环境。农村和农业节能减排是国家节能减排工作的重要组成部分,也是每一个农民群众应尽的责任,这项工作潜力巨大,前景广阔。一、农村和农业节能减排不容忽视长期以来,我国以煤为主的能源结构和粗放型的增长方式对环境造成了很大破坏,我国已经成为世界第二大能     

生态农业在节能减排中具有重要作用——访中国工程院院士李文华

中国工程院院士、中国科学院地理科学与资源研究所研究员李文华长期从事生态建设、资源管理以及生态农业等领域的研究,兼任中国生态学会名誉理事长、中国人民大学环境学院名誉院长等,是我国最具权威和影响力的生态学家之一。日前,就农业农村节能减排与生态农业建设等问题,接受了记者的采访。     

甘肃农业农村节能减排现状、问题及对策研究

深化农业、农村节能减排,加大农业废弃物资源利用,是农业、农村贯彻落实科学发展观的具体表现。本文拟以甘肃农业农村节能减排工作的现状和潜力为切入点,重点介绍近几年农业农村节能减排所采取的技术模式及取得的成功经验,提出今后发展的重点,进而推进甘肃农业农村节能减排的跨越式发展。     

我国生态农业经营模式创新

生态农业是我国加快转变农业发展方式的重要方向之一。推动生态农业发展,不仅在于提高技术效率、提供政府补贴,更要创新经营模式,形成基于市场的长效发展机制。2015年中央农村工作会议提出"产业融合"、"商业化运营"等理念,将经营模式创新作为破解农业发展难题的重要切入点,生态农业经营模式创新势在必行。本文分析了"农场-机构"计划、社区支持农业、预售制农业等生态农业主流经营模式的发展历程、基本特征、生态经济效益,提出推进生态农业一二三产业融合发展、规范生态农业标准和生态农产品认证、强化生态农业经营模式创新的人才支撑等我国生态农业发展策略。     

农业部发布"农业和农村节能减排十大技术"

为深入贯彻落实《农业部关于加强农业和农村节能减排工作的意见》,指导循环农业促进行动,更好地普及农业和农村节能减排知识。促进节能减排技术的推广应用．农业部在第五届中国国际农产品交易会上发布了“农业和农村节能减排十大技术”。包括畜禽粪便综合利用技术、秸秆能源利用技术、太阳能综合利用技术、农村小型电源利用技术、能源作物开发利用技术、农村省柴节煤炉灶炕技术、耕作制度节能技术、     

“十一五”期间农村沼气实现跨越式发展

＂十一五＂期间是我国农村沼气投入最大、发展最快、受益农户最多的时期,农村沼气实现跨越式发展,进入建管并重、多元发展的新阶段,成为新时期最重要的民生工程之一和新农村建设的一大亮点,被中央领导誉为中国应对气候变化最有效、最普遍的两大行动之一，在改善农村生产生活条件．促进农业发展方式转变．推进农业农村节能减排以及保护生态环境等方面发挥了重要作用。     

开展农村节能减排宣传培训让农牧民得到更多的实惠

节能减排,是党和国家作出的重大战略部署,也是转变经济发展方式、实现经济社会又好又快发展的必由之路。认真落实中央关于节能减排的工作部署,扎实推进农业和农村节能减排,是农业和农村工作面临的一项十分重要而紧迫的任务。     

“双一流”建设背景下农业生态教育的基本理论与实践应用

正在"双一流"建设背景下,加强农科专业教育有利于完善高等教育发展,推动农业农村向前发展。我国是一个农业大国,近几年农业机械化的迅速发展有力地推动了现代农业发展,有利于促进农业经济和社会经济的发展。但是我国尚未对农业生态建立起正确的认知,农业发展过程中的生态保护与治理、生态农业人才培育等方面仍存在一些不足之处。我国目前正处于经济转型发展时期,应该认识到发展生态农业的重要性。由宋志伟主编的《农业生态与环境保护》 (北京大学出版社)一书对农业生态和环境保护中的问题进行了深度探究,为高校教育工作者和农业工作者提供了有效参考。全书共分为十二个章节。     

台湾农业在大陆技术扩散研究文献综述

科技已成为我国农业发展的主要推动力量,但现有农业技术创新成果转化和推广能力明显不足,无法对现代农业的发展形成引领和支撑,一个重要原因在于先进农业技术的推广和扩散不足。梳理并评述了当前台湾农业技术在大陆扩散领域的相关研究论文,分析了现有研究中存在的不足,指出应重视受文化根植性影响的微观尺度的台湾农业技术扩散规律的研究,重视农村社会网络对台湾农业技术扩散的影响的研究,重视台湾农业技术扩散与大陆农业发展相互关系的探讨,"大陆反扩散"应该是研究的一个新领域。     

可持续发展生态农业经济效益的指标体系构建研究

农业是我国国民经济的基础,生态农业在国民经济发展过程中占据重要地位。发展生态农业是建设资源节约型、环境友好型社会的需求,也是人民群众正常生活的保障。发展生态农业可以科学维护我国土地资源,对生态环境和水资源具有保护作用。文章分析了可持续发展生态农业经济效益的指标体系构建,提出了生态农业发展战略,以期为相关人员提供参考。     

Price transmission between products at different stages of manufacturing in forest industries

The theory of demand and supply implies a positive relationship, or “price transmission” between the prices of products at different stages of manufacturing. This relationship was investigated with quarterly prices of softwood stumpage in the US South, and national prices of forest products, from 1977 to 2002. All prices, net of inflation, were found to be nonstationary and there was no evidence of co-integration between prices. Vector autogressive models, augmented by Granger causality tests and multiplier analysis showed that there was a one-to-one permanent positive response of the southern sawtimber stumpage price to a permanent change in the national lumber price. There was also a one-third permanent positive response of the national paper price to a permanent change in the national pulp price. There was no relation between regional pulpwood prices and national pulp or paper prices. When price transmission was significant, the full adjustment took about 2 years.     

Application of an ecosystem function framework to perceptions of community woodlands

Owners, local residents, government, and conservation organisations can express divergent preferences in the development and management of local woodlands. The perceptions of these four groups were examined, in the context of three community woodlands in Eastern England, using an ecosystem function framework. In a pilot study, residents were able to allocate a relative importance to woodland ecosystem services which were then related to “regulation”, “habitat”, and “production” or “information” functions. However residents also placed importance on negative services or “dis-services” associated with the woodland ecosystem. Therefore a fifth category of “dis-services” was included in the main survey which included 84 local residents, three woodland owners, three government institutions, and six representatives from conservation groups. Each of the four groups placed greatest importance on services associated with habitat (16–39% of the total importance) and information (30–50%) functions suggesting, in this example, mutual interest in the use of woodlands as a habitat or recreational resource. By contrast a potential area of difference was the particularly high importance placed by one owner on dis-services such as fly tipping. In addition the woodland owners placed higher importance (10–20%), than local residents and conservation groups (7–9%), on the productive services of the wood. This suggests a need for communication when production-related operations affect recreation. The ecosystem function framework appears to be a useful approach for highlighting potential tensions and areas of mutual interest in the management of semi-natural ecosystems.     

In Vino ‘No’ Veritas: impacts of fraud on wine imports in China

China is one of the largest wine importing countries in the world and is poised for continued import growth in the future. Increased wine purchases throughout China have given rise to persistent fraud where fake wines are packaged and sold with counterfeit contents and labels. For exporting countries like France, counterfeit wines displace market share, damage foreign brand reputation, and cause distrust in consumers who are aware of counterfeiting problems throughout the country. We examine the impact of fraudulent wine events (as measured by negative media reports) on Chinese wine demand differentiated by supplying country. We employ the Rotterdam demand system and a switching regression procedure to estimate import demand and compare results across different media variable specifications. Results consistently show that negative reports disproportionately affect French wine regardless of how the media variable is specified. This is not surprising because most fraudulent events involve French wine counterfeits.     

An evaluation framework for earthquake-responsive land administration

In recent years earthquakes and their secondary hazards have claimed the largest number of lives of all large natural disasters. Some of the world’s most earthquake-prone zones are also areas of high population density. The impact is magnified by vulnerability factors including non-enforcement of building codes, knowledge gaps, urban poverty and poor governance capacity to manage and reduce earthquake risks. Poor security of land tenure and property rights increases the vulnerability of people and affects their ability to respond to natural disasters.Earthquake recovery and reconstruction provides very significant challenges for land agencies, with these challenges differing from one country to the next due to differences in the local context. Drawing on contrasting case studies in Haiti, Nepal and New Zealand this paper identifies the common post-earthquake land administration functions and challenges that may apply to many contexts. These lessons provide land agencies and other key stakeholders with a summary of the challenges an earthquake poses for land administration at different post-disaster stages. We also discuss the policy and regulatory, institutional, operational and preparedness lessons for land administration. From these lessons we propose a framework for evaluating the earthquake-responsiveness of a land administration system. This framework can be used by a land agency in an earthquake prone region, or where an earthquake has recently occurred, to assess what challenges to land administration might occur in the event of an earthquake, and the preparedness of their land administration system.     

Agrarian Poverty,Nutrition and Economic Class – A Study of Gujarat,India

This paper analyses poverty and calorific undernourishment in the Indian state of Gujarat, where high and market‐led industrial growth has resulted in rapid economic improvement. The study is carried out through a combination of secondary and survey‐based data. We conclude that the neoliberal agenda of uncontrolled, outward‐looking growth has not resulted in significant reduction of poverty or malnourishment in rural areas. Furthermore, while land ownership is officially used as a proxy for wealth distribution, class position appears a better predictor of poverty status in the rural areas than landownership per se. At the policy level, there is a need to revive the agrarian economy and create new non‐agricultural assets, and the primary focus in the state must shift to the distribution of created assets rather than a single‐minded focus on growth.     

Does sustainable agricultural growth require a system of innovation? Evidence from Ghana and Burkina Faso

This paper tests the ‘systems of innovation’ hypothesis for a selection of crops in Ghana and Burkina Faso that have shown significant growth in production over an approximately 20-year period. The question is whether such growth can only occur if supported by a system of innovation. Using two indicators (a common understanding on objectives and priorities, and a high level of interactivity), we find little evidence for the existence of anything that might be considered a high functioning system of innovation.     

Local impacts of industrial tree plantations: An empirical analysis in Indonesia across plantation types

The values ascribed to industrial tree plantations are often controversial. Hence knowledge of their perceived impacts is important for improving their integration in rural landscapes. In 2016 we conducted household surveys with 606 respondents living in villages adjacent to acacia, teak and pine plantations across three islands in Indonesia (Java, Borneo, Sumatra). Results show that perceptions toward pine and teak plantations tend to differ from those toward acacia pulpwood plantations in several ways. Pine and teak plantations are perceived to have a higher number and variety of benefits and services, a higher number of positive impacts, a better environmental record, and to present more opportunities to local people for use of plantation land and products for improving rural livelihoods. In addition, we find that villagers around acacia pulpwood plantations tend to seek economic development and infrastructure to open up remote areas, yet their expectations were often only partially met. Recommendations from our analysis include: the role of the State in plantations must be clarified and potentially reinforced; the role of institutions as intermediaries is fundamental; and contributions by communities to design of management plans should be accommodated.     

Upstream demand for water use by new tree plantations imposes externalities on downstream irrigated agriculture and wetlands*

Large‐scale tree plantations in high rainfall upstream areas can reduce fresh water inflows to river systems, thereby imposing external costs on downstream irrigation, stock and domestic water users and wetland interests. We take the novel approach of expressing all benefits and costs of establishing plantations in terms of $ per gigalitre (GL) of water removed annually from river flows, setting upstream demands on the same basis as downstream demands. For the Macquarie Valley, a New South Wales sub‐catchment of Australia’s Murray‐Darling Basin, we project changes in land and water use and changes in economic surpluses under two policy settings: without and with a policy requiring permanent water entitlements to be purchased from downstream parties, before plantation establishment. Without the policy, and given a high stumpage value for trees ($70/m³), upstream gains in economic surplus projected from expanding plantations are $639 million; balanced against $233 million in economic losses by downstream irrigators and stock and domestic water users for a net gain of $406 million, but 345 GL lower mean annual environmental flows. With the policy, smaller gains in upstream economic surplus from trees ($192 million), added to net downstream gains ($138 million) from sale of water, result in gains of $330 million with no reduction in environmental flows. Sustaining the 345 GL flow for a $76 million (406–330) reduction in gains to economic surplus may be seen to cost only $0.22 million/GL; but this is much lower than the market value of the first units of that water to agriculture and forestry.     

Malaria incidence and agricultural efficiency in Uganda

The cost of accessing healthcare can be a major determinant of disease prevalence, which in turn has short‐ and long‐term welfare implications on poor households. In response, governments in developing countries often resort to subsidizing the cost of drugs, which, while perhaps easier to administer, may not always be the most effective way of addressing healthcare cost. In this regard, we analyze the impact of different types of household level health expenses on disease incidence and agricultural production efficiency. We use data from the 2006 Uganda National Household Survey, which covered approximately 7,400 households. The results suggest that a 10% increase in consultation, medicine, and hospitalization expenses would reduce malaria incidence respectively by 35.6%, 20.5%, and 21.3 %, which translates into a 1.1%, 0.6%, and 0.6 % decrease in agricultural inefficiency, respectively. The results indicate that helping poor households meet expenses for consultation through subsidies or eliminating consultation fees has a larger impact on malaria incidence and agricultural productivity among poor rural households than subsidizing the cost of medical drugs, the most common avenue chosen by developing country governments in the fight against the disease.     

Underpayment of Small Producers of Coffee and Cocoa in Sierra Leone

Fieldwork shows that many Sierra Leonean producers do not receive the official producer price for their coffee and cocoa, due to the concentration of buying stations, credit relations, the small quantities offered for sale, and the lack of marketing knowledge of the numerous and unorganized farmers. To the traders underpayment may seem economically justifiable to a certain extent, but to the farmers it means poverty and debt. A new village marketing centre project aims at remedying this situation and has already led to higher prices. Although no longer allowed to take their "just" share from the producers, traders are still willing to deal with the new centres.