Migrant farmworkers: Resisting and organising before,during and after COVID-19

Migrant farmworkers are a ubiquitous but invisibilised, expropriated and exploited component of the global agricultural economy. Their conditions took centre-stage during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fear of production disruption in the migrant labour-intensive sectors led to foreign workers being deemed ‘essential’ in many countries, and exceptional procedures and regulations were instituted that further increased their exploitation, illnesses and deaths. However, the pandemic has not merely exposed the long-established structures of racialised exploitation and expropriation in the domain of farm work. Although it exacerbated the precariousness of the living and working conditions defining the reality of migrant farm workers, there is evidence that the pandemic also strengthened farmworkers' individual and collective consciousness, along with forms of organisation and resistance. The symposium ‘Migrant Farmworkers: Resisting and Organizing before, during and after COVID-19’ explores two dimensions reflected in migrant farmworkers' realities during the pandemic. First, the contributions look at the general conditions defining power structures and material outcomes within the political economy of agriculture before and during the pandemic. Second, they explore the conditions under which resistance and solidarity emerged to question established structures of exploitation.     

Land and small farmer resistance in authoritarian Egypt

This article examines small farmer resistance in Egypt. It situates contemporary struggles in the context of the uneven success of small farmers' historical resistance to land dispossession and neoliberal reform. Struggles over land are the prime driver of rural conflict and small farmers contest state strategies that reward local elites, land owners, and supporters of the military regime. There may not be a coherent social movement able to resist contemporary patterns of capital accumulation, but there are elements of resistance that edge forward an agenda for a “political conversation” about much-needed deep social reforms. The internationally-supported Sisi presidency has used violence to consolidate military power, making open revolt difficult. Nevertheless, small farmers link struggles over access to land with poor state provisioning of water and infrastructure as a means of building resistance.     

积沙沥青路面抗滑性能实验研究

为研究积沙对路面抗滑性能的影响,通过室内试验成型了AC-13和AC-16两种集配类型的沥青混合料试件,借助摆式摩擦系数测试仪测试不同温度和积沙量下的摆值(BPN),建立抗滑性能随积沙量增加的衰减模型,并基于两因素与抗滑性能进行灰色关联度分析.试验结果表明,两种沥青混合料的抗滑性能都随着积沙量的增加逐渐减小,最终趋于稳定;积沙量是影响抗滑性能的主要因素.     

Of waste facility siting and relational geographies of place: Peri-urban landfills,community resistance and the politics of land control in Ghana

The siting of landfills in peri-urban spaces is seen as both a solution to land scarcity in inner cities and a development opportunity for rural hinterlands. Despite the widespread reliance on landfills for managing urban waste in Ghana, their operation tends to ignite land use conflicts at different scales. However, existing studies on the drivers of these conflicts have mostly failed to situate local resistance within the broader political economy of land control. Drawing on a longstanding landfill conflict in northern Ghana, this contribution shows how under the guise of landfills, the land question in peri-urban spaces is contested. While at face value the landfill struggle appears to be fuelled by the associated poor environmental conditions and health risks of waste from the inner city, our findings reveal the role of diverse incongruities including: (i) the crafty tactics deployed by state institutions in land acquisition for 'public interest', (ii) payment of unrealistic consideration, and (iii) diversion of designated public lands to undeclared uses. Amid these contestations, the notion of territorial belonging by peri-urban communities often runs counter to statutory ordering by the government who hold such hitherto private lands for ‘public interest’. Powerful local actors such as chiefs hide behind community agitations with hopes of controlling land if such contestations materialize. These dynamics have ramifications for the achievement of the New Urban Agenda of Habitat III, which focuses on secondary cities. A sustainable resolution of landfill-related conflicts must therefore begin with addressing the land question in peri-urban spaces.     

Model to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of different antibiotics in the management of acute bacterial exacerbations of chronic bronchitis in Germany

Summary

This study investigated the primary cost-drivers and determinants of the cost-effectiveness of antibacterial treatment of acute bacterial exacerbations of chronic bronchitis (ABECB) in Germany. It assessed the health care costs and consequences related to treatment initiated in the community using macrolides, fluoroquinolones, penicillins, and cephalosporins. Patients were categorised according to disease severity. Decision analysis was used to consider the clinical and economic consequences of various treatment options from first-line treatment initiated by a primary care physician in the community until success or failure after third-line treatment in hospital.

The key cost drivers were the clinical success/failure rates of first-line treatment and the cost per day of hospitalisation. Antibiotics with the cheapest purchase price are not necessarily the most cost-effective first-line treatment. In more severe ABECB, drug acquisition costs are only a small proportion of the total healthcare costs because the extra costs associated with treatment failure are much greater than the acquisition costs of the first-line antibiotics. Thus the most cost-effective first-line treatment is one which results in consistently high clinical effectiveness due to its broad spectrum of activity, low rate of bacterial resistance, and high patient compliance. Of the antibiotics considered, none was consistently found to be the most cost-effective treatment across the full range of scenarios investigated. However, the fluoroquinolones and cephalosporins were generally more cost-effective than the macrolides and penicillins.     

Food Riots: Poverty,Power and Protest1

This paper explores the phenomenon of food riots. It argues that the riots may have been triggered by spikes in food prices in 2007–8, but there were many other factors that underpinned them. Demonstrators challenged injustice, inequality and political repression. Food riots were part of an important groundswell of mobilization that brought together a wide range of political coalitions for change and the promotion of human dignity.     

The Defence of Community in the Anti‐Mining Movement of Guatemala

Mining is one of the most controversial activities in contemporary Guatemala. The anti‐mining movement was studied during five months of participant and qualitative research, focusing on its strategies and discourses. The movement is multiscalar, with local, national and transnational dimensions, but the defence of community is a central claim in its discourse. The community is reclaimed as a legitimate scale for decision‐making by the anti‐mining movement because it is: (a) the scale that suffers the material impacts of mining; (b) the place of Maya cultural resistance for reimagining alternative development projects; and (c) an historically marginalized sector of the population, that should be empowered in order to achieve more participative and fair decision‐making processes. As in other peasant struggles, defending the community is not an objective per se, but a strategy to contest domination. The community is dialectically redefined in relation to Guatemala's historical injustices.     

VA菌根对植物生长发育及抗性影响的研究进展

VA菌根是一种比较常见的内生菌根。本文综述了它对植物的生长发育、植物水分和养分吸收能力以及植物抗逆性等方面的影响研究进展,指出VA菌根真菌对植物生长具有极其重要的生态价值和经济价值,在农、林业和环境保护中应得到广泛的应用。     

水泥混凝土路面的抗裂措施综述

从水泥混凝土路面开裂破坏过程及其影响因素进行了研究分析,并根据原因分析从各方面提出抗裂防治措施。