Bans,tests, and alchemy: Food safety regulation and the Uganda fish export industry     

Stefano Ponte 《Agriculture and Human Values》2007,24(2):179-193

Contemporary regulation of food safety incorporates principles of quality management and systemic performance objectives that used to characterize private standards. Conversely, private standards are covering ground that used to be the realm of regulation. The nature of the two is becoming increasingly indistinguishable. The case study of the Ugandan fish export industry highlights how management methods borrowed from private standards can be applied to public regulation to achieve seemingly conflicting objectives. In the late 1990s, the EU imposed repeated bans on fish imported from Uganda on the basis of food safety concerns. However, the EU did not provide scientific proof that the fish were actually “unsafe.” Rather, the poor performance of Uganda’s regulatory and monitoring system was used as justification. Only by fixing “the system” (of regulations and inspections) and performing the ritual of laboratory testing for all consignments for export to the EU did the Ugandan industry regain its status as a “safe” source of fish. Yet, gaps and inconsistencies abound in the current Ugandan fish safety management system. Some operations are by necessity carried out as “rituals of verification.” Given the importance of microbiological tests and laboratories in the compliance system, “alchemic rituals” provide an appropriate metaphor. These rituals are part and parcel of a model that reassures the EU fish-eating public that all is under control in Uganda from boat to point of export. As a consequence, actual non-compliance from boat to landing site allows the fishery to survive as an artisanal operation. Stefano Ponte is Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen. His research focuses on the role of standards, regulation and quality conventions in the governance of agro-food value chains, with particular focus on Africa. He is co-author of Trading Down: Africa, Value Chains and the Global Economy and The Coffee Paradox: Global Markets, Commodity Trade and the Elusive Promise of Development.  相似文献   

Reverse leasing and power dynamics among blue agave farmers in western Mexico     

Sarah Bowen  Peter R. W. Gerritsen 《Agriculture and Human Values》2007,24(4):473-488

We examine changing production relations in the Mexican tequila industry to explore the ways in which large industrial firms are using “reverse leasing arrangements,” a form of contract farming, to extend their control over small agave farmers. Under these arrangements, smallholders rent their parcels to contracting companies who bring in capital, machinery, labor, and other agricultural inputs. Smallholders do not have access to their land, nor do they make any of the management decisions. We analyze the factors that have led some producers to participate in reverse leasing arrangements, while allowing other producers to continue farming independently. In addition, we look at the ways in which farmers are responding to these new production relations and constraints and the strategies that they are using to regain control over the production process.

Sarah BowenEmail:

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Cartilage acidic protein-1B (LOTUS), an endogenous Nogo receptor antagonist for axon tract formation     

Sato Y  Iketani M  Kurihara Y  Yamaguchi M  Yamashita N  Nakamura F  Arie Y  Kawasaki T  Hirata T  Abe T  Kiyonari H  Strittmatter SM  Goshima Y  Takei K 《Science (New York, N.Y.)》2011,333(6043):769-773

Neural circuitry formation depends on the molecular control of axonal projection during development. By screening with fluorophore-assisted light inactivation in the developing mouse brain, we identified cartilage acidic protein-1B as a key molecule for lateral olfactory tract (LOT) formation and named it LOT usher substance (LOTUS). We further identified Nogo receptor-1 (NgR1) as a LOTUS-binding protein. NgR1 is a receptor of myelin-derived axon growth inhibitors, such as Nogo, which prevent neural regeneration in the adult. LOTUS suppressed Nogo-NgR1 binding and Nogo-induced growth cone collapse. A defasciculated LOT was present in lotus-deficient mice but not in mice lacking both lotus- and ngr1. These findings suggest that endogenous antagonism of NgR1 by LOTUS is crucial for normal LOT formation.  相似文献   

Consumption strategies in Mexican rural households: pursuing food security with quality     

Kirsten Appendini  Ma. Guadalupe Quijada 《Agriculture and Human Values》2016,33(2):439-454

Food quality is an important issue on the global agenda, particularly in high- and middle-income economies, but of little concern in designing Mexico’s food policy. Food policy has focused on quantity and in the case of maize, on satisfying domestic demand by supporting large commercial agriculture and importing from abroad. However, and as argued in this paper, obtaining a food staple (maize-tortilla) of quality is also an important issue for rural households and contributes to motivating continued smallholder production. Based on case studies in the rural district of Atlacomulco, in the state of Mexico, as well as in two regions of the state of Chiapas, this paper analyzes the production and consumption strategies of rural households. We focus on goals of food security and quality and note differential trends among households of varying characteristics and local contexts. We find that the motivation of small-scale producers to grow maize should be supported by Mexico’s food policy.  相似文献   

A helical polymer with a cooperative response to chiral information     

Green MM  Peterson NC  Sato T  Teramoto A  Cook R  Lifson S 《Science (New York, N.Y.)》1995,268(5219):1860-1866

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Action research on alternative land tenure arrangements in Wenchi,Ghana: learning from ambiguous social dynamics and self-organized institutional innovation     

Samuel Adjei-Nsiah  Cees Leeuwis  Ken E. Giller  Thom W. Kuyper 《Agriculture and Human Values》2008,25(3):389-403

This study reports on action research efforts that were aimed at developing institutional arrangements beneficial for soil fertility improvement. Three stages of action research are described and analyzed. We initially began by bringing stakeholders together in a platform to engage in a collaborative design of new arrangements. However, this effort was stymied mainly because conditions conducive for learning and negotiation were lacking. We then proceeded to support experimentation with alternative arrangements initiated by individual landowners and migrant farmers. The implementation of these arrangements too ran into difficulties due to intra-family dynamics and ambiguities regarding land tenure. Further investigations to find out how ambiguities could be tackled revealed that the local actors themselves had taken initiatives towards developing institutional innovations to reduce ambiguities. However, there is still considerable scope for further development of these self-organized innovations. The article ends with a reflection on inter-disciplinary action research, where it is argued that making “mistakes” is an inherent and necessary characteristic in action research that aims to address complex social issues.

Samuel Adjei-NsiahEmail:

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“<Emphasis Type="Italic">Chasms</Emphasis>” in agrifood systems: rethinking how we can contribute     

William H. Friedland 《Agriculture and Human Values》2008,25(2):197-201

The reaction to conventional agriculture and food systems has generated a host of alternative social movements in the past several decades. Many progressive agrifood researchers have researched these movements, exploring their strengths, weaknesses, and failures. Most such research is abstracted from the movements themselves. This paper proposes a new way of self-organization that, while fulfilling traditional university demands on researchers, will provide research support for progressive agrifood movements by transcending the boundaries of disciplines and individual universities.

William H. FriedlandEmail:

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William H. Friedland   is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz where his research continues on commodity systems, wine and grapes, the globalization of agriculture and food, and exploring ways to strengthen alternative social movements to subvert the dominant paradigm.  相似文献   

Regular Production of Transgenic Wheat Mediated by Agrobacterium tumefaciens   总被引：4，自引：1，他引：4  

YE Xing-guo  Shirley Sato  XU Hui-jun  DU Li-Pu  Tom Clemente 《中国农业科学(英文版)》2002,1(3):239-244

Wheat is the number one crop both in acreage and total yield in the world. Therefore, it is very important to improve wheat by gene engineering techniques even though it belongs to the plants insensitive to gene transformation, especially to Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Wheat immature embryos of 1.0-1.5mm in size, C58c1 of Agrobacterium strain harboring pPTN249, pPTN270, pPTN254, and pSIS-GFP respectively (all the vectors contain the aphA selectable gene driven by enhanced 35S promoter and a target gene controlled by ubi promoter or E35S promoter), AB medium for Agrobacterium activate culture, WCC medium for co-culture, were used in this study. The embryos with 4 days of pre-culture were transferred onto selection medium with 10mg/L geneticin, 50mg/L ticarcillin, 50mg/L vancomycin, and 50mg/L cefotaxine after 30 minutes of infection and 2 days of co-cultivation with Agrobacterium. Followed callus production,shoot regeneration on selection medium, 114 resistant plantlets were obtained from 10 transformation experiments of four genotypes. By nptⅡ ELISA (nptⅡ enzyme assay), PCR, Southern blot and leaf bleach,29 positive plants were identified from two genotypes of Bobwhite and Yanglmai 10, with an average transformation efficiency of 0.82 %. The result tested by Southern blot also showed that the transgenic plants with single- copy integration of target gene took 65.52% among total positive plants. The ELISA value of transgenic plant was also related to the copies of alien DNA integrating into wheat chromosomes, the transgenic plants with single copy integration giving higher ELISA value than the ones with 2 or 3 copies integration.  相似文献   

Management Zones Classified With Respect to Drought and Waterlogging     

Sofia Delin  Kerstin Berglund 《Precision Agriculture》2005,6(4):321-340

Within-field variations in potential grain yield may be due to variations in plant available soil water. Different water holding capacities affect yield differently in different years depending on weather. By estimating plant-water availability in different weathers, scenarios could be created of how yield potential and thereby fertilizer demand may vary within fields. To test this, measured cereal grain yields from a dry, a wet and an intermediate year were compared with different soil moisture related variables in a Swedish arable field consisting of clayey and sandy areas. Soil water budget calculations based on weather data and maximum plant available water (PAW), estimated from soil type and rooting data, were used to assess drought. A reasonable correlation between estimated and measured soil moisture was achieved. In the dry year, drought days explained differences in yield between the clayey and the sandy soil, but yield was better explained directly by maximum PAW, elevation, clay content and soil electrical conductivity (SEC). Yield correlated significantly with SEC and elevation within the sandy soil in the dry year and within the clayey soil in the wet year, probably due to water and nitrogen limitation respectively. Dense SEC, elevation and yield data were therefore used to divide the field into management zones representing different risk levels for drought and waterlogging. These could be used as a decision support tool for site-specific N fertilization, since both drought and waterlogging affect N fertilization demand.  相似文献   

Discovery of a Jupiter/Saturn analog with gravitational microlensing     

Gaudi BS  Bennett DP  Udalski A  Gould A  Christie GW  Maoz D  Dong S  McCormick J  Szymanski MK  Tristram PJ  Nikolaev S  Paczynski B  Kubiak M  Pietrzynski G  Soszynski I  Szewczyk O  Ulaczyk K  Wyrzykowski L;OGLE Collaboration  Depoy DL  Han C  Kaspi S  Lee CU  Mallia F  Natusch T  Pogge RW  Park BG;MuFUN Collaboration  Abe F  Bond IA  Botzler CS  Fukui A  Hearnshaw JB  Itow Y  Kamiya K  Korpela AV  Kilmartin PM  Lin W  Masuda K  Matsubara Y  Motomura M  Muraki Y  Nakamura S  Okumura T  Ohnishi K  Rattenbury NJ  Sako T  Saito T  Sato S 《Science (New York, N.Y.)》2008,319(5865):927-930

Searches for extrasolar planets have uncovered an astonishing diversity of planetary systems, yet the frequency of solar system analogs remains unknown. The gravitational microlensing planet search method is potentially sensitive to multiple-planet systems containing analogs of all the solar system planets except Mercury. We report the detection of a multiple-planet system with microlensing. We identify two planets with masses of approximately 0.71 and approximately 0.27 times the mass of Jupiter and orbital separations of approximately 2.3 and approximately 4.6 astronomical units orbiting a primary star of mass approximately 0.50 solar mass at a distance of approximately 1.5 kiloparsecs. This system resembles a scaled version of our solar system in that the mass ratio, separation ratio, and equilibrium temperatures of the planets are similar to those of Jupiter and Saturn. These planets could not have been detected with other techniques; their discovery from only six confirmed microlensing planet detections suggests that solar system analogs may be common.  相似文献