In recent years the rural enterprise has become a key theme in small business research. Despite an extensive and increasingly sophisticated literature analysing rural firms, the research effort has largely excluded agnculture. This exclusion reflects a wider separation of agriculture and industry which is apparent not only in scholarship, but in the political, social and economic institutions w...

The aim of this study was to investigate farm-level economic and technical factors that are associated with the use of antibiotics on pig farms. Identification of such factors, like farm size and net farm result, may help to increase epidemiological knowledge and to specify farm advice and policy making to reduce inappropriate use of antibiotics. The study used over 300 farm-year records collec...

the aim of this paper is to use the concept of the metafrontier function to study the determination of efficiency differentials and technological gap ratio (tgr) on wheat production in khorasan razavi province. in this study, we used the metafrontier function and group frontier based on the concept of stochastic nonparametric envelopment of data analysis (stoned). the data used in this study co...

Many collaborators and graduate and undergraduate students have been involved in the work summarized below. We also thank the Oregon Blueberry Commission, Oregon Raspberry and Blackberry Commission, Oregon Strawberry Commission, Northwest Center for Small Fruits Research, the Washington Blueberry Commission, NIFA-OREI, Fall Creek Farm & Nursery, Oregon Blueberry Farms, Sakuma Bros. Farms & Nurs...

In tracing the source of an outbreak of food-poisoning with Salmonella virchow a chicken-packing station and associated rearing farms were investigated. The serotype was found in chickens in 9 of the 14 rearing farms investigated and in the hatchery, but not in the breeding flocks supplying the hatchery. Several personnel on the farms were affected. The infection was most likely to have been in...

INTRODUCTION Care farms, where all or part of the farm is used for therapeutic purposes, show much potential for improving the health and well-being of a range of disadvantaged groups. Studies to date have been qualitative or observational, with limited empirical evidence of the effectiveness of care farms in improving health and well-being. Understanding the underlying mechanisms that lead to ...

The accumulation of copper and zinc, the basic components of anti-fouling paints, was examined in cultured sea bass Dicentrarchus labrax and sea bream Sparus aurata. Samplings were carried out at 4 eastern Mediterranean fish farms. Two of the farms used nets treated with anti-fouling paints, and 2 used untreated nets. At each farm samples of sediment and fish tissue (muscle, liver and gills) we...

In 2007, a human Q fever epidemic started, mainly in the south eastern part of The Netherlands with a suspected indirect relation to dairy goats, and, to a lesser degree, to dairy sheep. This article describes the Q fever prevalences in Dutch dairy goat and dairy sheep bulk tank milk (BTM) samples, using a real-time (RT) PCR and ELISA. Results of BTM PCR and ELISA were compared with the serolog...

Differences in adoption of selected practices used in welfare assessment and audit programs were contrasted among organic (ORG; n=192) herds and similarly sized conventional grazing herds (CON-GR; n=36), and conventional nongrazing herds (CON-NG; n=64). Criteria from 3 programs were assessed: American Humane Association Animal Welfare Standards for Dairy Cattle, Farmers Assuring Responsible Man...

Castration of piglets with the use of isoflurane-anaesthesia in combination with an analgesic has been proven to be an animal-friendly approach. However, castration is performed with an equipped anaesthetic device which is not profitable for small farms. Thus, this study aimed at investigating whether sharing the anaesthetic device among farms results in an elevated risk of bacteriological cont...