Iowa State University, Courses and Programs Catalog 2014–2015

The Iowa State University Catalog is a one-year publication which lists all academic policies, and procedures. The catalog also includes the following: information for fees; curriculum requirements; first-year courses of study for over 100 undergraduate majors; course descriptions for nearly 5000 undergraduate and graduate courses; and a listing of faculty members at Iowa State University.https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/catalog/1025/thumbnail.jp

Agricultural Cooperative in the Face of the Challenges of Globalization, Sustainability and Digitalization

The enormous contribution of agricultural cooperative societies to the rural world has not gone unnoticed. This is corroborated by many international entities. The International Cooperative Alliance estimates that 12% of the world's population is linked to one of the 3 million cooperatives that exist worldwide. Therefore, cooperative societies are not a marginal phenomenon. In relation to the role played by agricultural cooperatives in the world, it should be said that the agricultural cooperative is an enterprise unconditionally and stably linked to the rural environment, to the farmer and the stockbreeder. For this reason, it plays a leading role in the local economy and in the fixation of the population to the territory, thus contributing to the balance and management of the territory, which makes them true agents of rural development. On the other hand, cooperative societies have been the guarantors of the structuring of agriculture in rural areas in many countries. These organizations constitute the main structured, organized, professionalized and stable network established throughout the territory, in contact with the rural environment, with the capacity to communicate with and influence farmers and stockbreeders. They directly or indirectly provide much of the employment in the rural world and cooperative societies by nature develop their activity under cooperative principles and values that make them exponents of socially responsible enterprises and, therefore, are the key to sustainable development, as promulgated by the United Nations through the SDGs

Food Supply Chains and Eva.CAN Model: a Network Analytic Approach

The research work leading to the drafting of this PhD thesis approaches the analysis of supply chains of products of animal origin from various productive species by using network analytic methods. In the studied analysis six supply chains are embedded in a single model which highlights all the interconnections that have little evidence in traditional models. This new model that we called Eva.CAN (Evaluation of Complex Agri-food Network Model) is a new concept model, the first complex network model for the agri-food production, the first to allow the application of Network Theory analysis methods. The initial hypothesis is that the various supply chains of products of animal origin have to be interpreted and analyzed as a whole, as a single complex system. The complex network is studied analyzing the adjacency matrix that constitutes the network with algorithms and methods extensively tested and validated. This analytical approach has already been applied with positive results in many research areas such as social networks, transport networks, the stylistic of writers and musicians, proteomics, pharmacology, medicine, biology, and many others. We apply this methodology to supply chains of products of animal origin and show a series of preliminary results. This method of study of food supply chains could be useful for an observatory, bringing to light slightly evident relations and becoming a strong support for policy-makers. It can also provide useful advices to individual actors on how to optimize their own supply chains. Finally, through an effective enumeration and evaluation of the relationships, a network model could be helpful in design of tracking and traceability systems