拯救民勤!

甘肃省民勤县地处河西走廊东北部,位于石羊河流域最下游.西邻巴丹吉林沙漠,东北靠腾格里沙漠,历史上,民勤绿洲历来是阻止两大沙漠汇合的屏障,被誉为镶在沙漠深处的绿色宝石.民勤原本是个水草丰美的绿洲,是串在丝绸之路上的一颗珍珠.据史料记载,明代以前,民勤"木多榆杨而槐桑桐并茂".祁连山的冰川融水经石羊河流向民勤,尾端形成青土湖.1000多年前,青土湖碧波万顷、湖水荡漾,周边水草丰美,可牧可渔.     

Don't worry,be happy!

从什么时候开始,中国当代艺术何时陷落到集体性的焦虑症状中?是一个耐人寻味的话题。如果反复回看过去三十年中不同的艺术历史阶段中的历史事件、个案、和代表性的艺术作品,这种焦虑可能被转化为一种阴影至今尚未解脱,反随着国势上升而愈演愈烈。1980年代强调的启蒙和解放是以西方为标准的,这个西方显然是作为中心的欧美,而非其他。80年代剧烈的艺术革新潮流并未使中国艺术获得某种程度的解放,而是更深的卷入了对西方的想象、期待和被西方命名的焦虑中,事实上,80     

制造世界:对未来的一瞥!

第53届威尼斯双年展,如往常一样,意欲展示当代艺术最前沿的新趋势,每个国家中那些初出茅庐的,或已享有一定知名度的艺术家犹如该国的艺术大使在威尼斯双年展上展示自己的艺术。今年,威尼斯双年展的展览规模空前的扩大,可谓百花齐放。从传统的军械库(Arsenale),绿堡花园(Giardini)开始,     

Where's the economics? The core discipline of farm management has gone missing!*

Economic illiteracy is abundant in farm management analysis. Failure to understand that economics is the core discipline of farm‐management analysis and failure to apply the whole‐farm approach leads to wrong questions being asked and wrong answers being given. The power of economic thinking is in making sense of resource allocation questions in farm systems characterised by much complexity and powerful dynamics. The challenge for those who continue to work in farm management economics is to re‐establish theoretically sound farm‐management analysis based on economics as the core discipline.     

Using Elasticities from an Almost Ideal Demand System? Watch Out for Group Expenditure!

Group expenditure has often been treated as exogenous when estimating demand parameters for a group of commodities with an almost ideal demand system. Researchers draw demand elasticities from past literature to use in their own analysis, but elasticities contingent on exogenous group expenditure may be inappropriate. Here, the approach is considered in the case of Japanese meat demand with a simple equation added to estimate group expenditures. The results show that elasticities should be revised and that a group expenditure equation is not a panacea as it may result in the violation of theoretical restrictions, such as symmetry.     

Show Me the Money! The Value of College Graduate Attributes as Expressed by Employers and Perceived by Students

Employers of agricultural undergraduates are presented with hypothetical job candidates with different attributes and salaries, and are asked which candidate, if any, they would hire. The employer choices are then used to estimate the additional salary they will pay for undergraduates with certain attributes. Students are administered similar surveys where they indicate which hypothetical candidate they think will be hired, which can be used to estimate students' perceived salary increase associated with each attribute. Employers' stated values are then compared to students' perceived values to identify any misperceptions regarding the monetary return of select attributes.     

‘Maize is Life,but Rice is Money!’ A Village Case Study of the2001/02 Famine in Malawi

This paper provides a case study of the 2001/02 famine in Malawi from a village in the Southern Region of the country. Based on in‐depth micro‐level field research, it challenges some commonly accepted views about this crisis. The paper provides evidence that: (1) there was a serious ‘famine’ in the community; (2) the decline in food availability was not the major causal factor of the famine; (3) the early warning system in the rural areas was functioning appropriately and the famine did not happen in ‘silence’, unnoticed; (4) the food preferences of Malawians are not ‘inflexible’; and (5) the famine, contrary to the claims of some of the ‘new famine hypotheses’, was less the consequence of underlying vulnerability and long‐term social or economic trends but, rather, the result of an unexpected and sudden shock, which was generated by the exponential increase in the price of all food crops.     

Insights into a black box! Comparison of organizational modes and their monetary implications for the producers of short rotation coppice (SRC) in Brandenburg/Germany

A substantial change in energy policy in Germany towards the substitution of fossil, nonrenewable energy resources is part of a current political and social process. This change has been accelerated by the government’s decision in summer 2011 to phase out nuclear energy, a direct result of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. As part of this development, new business activities and modes of organization for the provisioning of energy from alternative sources have emerged; one such activity is short rotation coppice (SRC) cultivation on agricultural land. In this paper, we compare the two prevailing organizational modes for SRC: independent production and contract farming. We use a mixed-methods approach to examine these modes from the producers’ point of view in Brandenburg/Germany. First, we give reasons for the producer’s choice between these two modes of organization based on the interviewee’s qualitative assessment of how these modes cope with perceived SRC-related challenges e.g. uncertainties. As economic uncertainty plays a major role in both refusal to adopt SRC and the choice of the mode of organization for SRC production, we secondly model the unknown economic outcome of the independent mode. We thereby give insights into the “black box”. This consists on the one hand of lacking economic figures for an economic comparison of both modes, and on the other hand of the producer’s decision-making process between both modes. For the latter, we use the theoretical approach of transaction costs to display ostensible non-monetary decision factors. Using a known monetary reference for the contract farming mode, we are able firstly to support a comparison of economic factors and secondly to identify and interpret the critical variables whose manifestations and/or changes are decisive for the economic outcome. The modelling results show that neither of the two modes performs better per se. This finding suggests that the weight ascribed to the transaction costs of SRC in each individual producer’s decision-making process is decisive for the producer’s choice of mode.