In recent years the appearance of private standards and codes of conduct has shaped the functioning of agri-food chains. These private standards, codes of conduct and quality metasystems are similar concepts that evolved as a response to food scares and the growing expectations of consumers about quality and other attributes. Large retailers and supermarket chains have developed private standar...

The social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum is unusual among eukaryotes in having both unicellular and multicellular stages. In the multicellular stage, some cells, called sentinels, ingest toxins, waste and bacteria. The sentinel cells ultimately fall away from the back of the migrating slug, thus removing these substances from the slug. However, some D. discoideum clones (called farmers) carry...

The objectives of this study are (i) to develop the Recommended Technology Adoption Index (RTAI), and (ii) to determine the relationship between socio-economic characteristics of the farmers which affect the technology adoption level of Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum). The average technology adoption index of study area was 0.72 with minimum 0.46 and maximum of 0.89 and the correlation betwee...

This paper investigates the relationship between food security and commercialisation using data from a household survey in National Smallholder Farmer Association of Malawi (NASFAM) operated areas. NASFAM promotes commercialisation of agriculture by introducing the principle of farming as a business among its members who are largely smallholder subsistence farmers. The study finds that househol...

©1999–2004 CHOICES. All rights reserved. Articles may be reproduced or electronically distributed as long as attribution to Choices and the American Agricultural Economics Association is maintained. Choices subscriptions are free and can be obtained through http://www.choicesmagazine.org. Carbon sequestration has attracted the interest of researchers, energy industry participants, policy makers...

This paper addresses several topics with reference to Philippine hunter-gatherer groups that are relevant to an understanding of their relationships with non-hunter-gatherer groups and their significance for historical linguistics. Section 1 first provides a discussion of the demographic ranges of the extant Negrito groups. In section 2, different views as to the time depth of the prehistoric r...

I develop a two-period stochastic dynamic programming model to explain the interaction between fertilizer use and off-farm labor supply. I use a well-known sample of farmers in the semi-arid tropics of India to test the model. I find that fertilizer use responds strongly to wages in the village labor market and that irrigation raises fertilizer use, while larger farmers use less fertilizer than...

History of acute symptoms (cough, wheezing, shortness of breath, fever, stuffy nose, and skin itching/rash) following exposure to grain dust was obtained from 661 male and 535 female current and former farmers. These symptoms were relatively common: 60% of male and 25% of female farmers reported at least one such symptom on exposure to grain dust. Association of cough, wheezing, shortness of br...

Abstract Empirical evidence of Taungya agroforestry program in Sudan was generated. The objectives were to examine the association between socio-economic characteristics farmers and Tuangya practice, assess program’s contribution farmers' income, highlight farmers’ major incentives constraints. purposive sampling technique applied targeting 200 farmers. Data collected using questionnaires, focu...