SOCIAL RELATIONS AND SEED TRANSACTIONS AMONG SMALLSCALE MAIZE FARMERS IN THE CENTRAL VALLEYS OF OAXACA, MEXICO; PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

This paper explores social arrangements associated with seed transactions among small-scale maize farmers in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico, a centre of crop genetic diversity. A formal seed distribution system has yet to develop in the region and when seed loss occurs, farmers are faced with costs and difficulties identifying, locating, and obtaining seed of desired varieties. For these reasons, it was hypothesized that there were strong incentives for collective action among farmers to facilitate seed supply. The study found, however, no evidence of collective action with regards to seed supply in the three study communities-San Pablo Huitzo, San Lorenzo Albarradas, Santa Ana Zegache. Instead, farmers acquired seed using a variety of networks of social relations and different types of seed transactions. The results suggest that seed flow among farmers in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca is a complex process of negotiation and reciprocity, influenced by a variety of agroecological, socioeconomic, and cultural factors.Farm Management,

Organizational analysis of the seed sector of rice in Guinea: stakeholders, perception and institutional linkages

This paper analyses the organization of the rice seed sector in Guinea with the overall objectives to assess how organizational settings affect seed supply to small-scale farmers and to suggest institutional changes that would favour seed service and uptake of varieties. Data were collected in Guinea, West Africa, using focus group discussions with extension workers, farmers, representatives of farmers’ associations, agro-input dealers, researchers and non-governmental organization (NGO) staff, and surveys of 91 rice farming households and 41 local seed dealers. Findings suggest that the current institutional settings and perceptions of stakeholders from the formal seed sector inhibit smallholder farmers’ access to seed. Seed interventions in the past two decades have mainly relied on the national extension system, the research institute, NGOs, farmers’ associations and contract seed producers to ensure seed delivery. Although local seed dealers play a central role in providing seed to farmers, governmental organizations operating in a linear model of formal seed sector development have so far ignored their role. We discuss the need to find common ground and alternative models of seed sector development. In particular we suggest the involvement of local seed dealers in seed development activities to better link the formal and the informal seed systems and improve smallholder farmers’ access to seed from the formal sector

Collective action for the conservation of on-farm genetic diversity in a center of crop diversity: an assessment of the role of traditional farmers' networks

"This project explored the possible role of collective action among small-scale farmers in managing and maintaining genetic resources in a center of crop diversity. It focused on the local institutions that ensure the supply of seed of diverse maize landraces to small-scale farmers in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico. The key hypothesis was that the medium-to-long-term supply of a diverse set of varieties to any individual small-scale maize farmer depends on an agreement among a group of farmers to manage and supply the seed of these landraces to each other, if the need arises, and that this constitutes a form of collective action. Six communities were studied, three of them in-depth. Methodologies used included in-depth semi-structured interviews with key informants, focus group discussions, and a tracer study—following the flows of seed among different farmers. The results show that, while there is a well-developed local seed supply system based on sets of social relationships and involving multiple types of transactions, there is no evidence of collective action. Most farmers rely on and prefer to select and save seed from their own harvests. There are seed flows, however, and most seed transactions take place among people with social links, but not within a well-defined group. There are no specialized suppliers of seed, either individuals or groups. Most transactions are bilateral and while the most common transaction is the sale and purchase of seed, this is not done for profit but out of a sense of moral obligation. The system is based on the creation of trust, which is needed because seed is not transparent—that is, it is not possible to fully predict the plant phenotype that may result from a given seed simply by looking at the seed. Farmers demand different types of maize and they believe that there is a strong genotype-by-environment interaction, hence “foreign” maize types may not be appropriate for them. At the same time, farmers also find occasional experimentation beneficial and believe that they can slowly modify the characteristics of “foreign” landraces. In this system, there are strong incentives to be conservative, but also to try new landraces and experiment. The local seed system of these farmers is resilient but able to innovate as well. Interventions to support the conservation of landraces on farm, based on specialized networks for seed that rely on collective action, may not work.." Author's AbstractCentral America, Europe and North America, Small farmers, Collective action, Informal seed systems, Crop diversification, Seed supply, Trust,

MoralStrength: Exploiting a Moral Lexicon and Embedding Similarity for Moral Foundations Prediction

Moral rhetoric plays a fundamental role in how we perceive and interpret the information we receive, greatly influencing our decision-making process. Especially when it comes to controversial social and political issues, our opinions and attitudes are hardly ever based on evidence alone. The Moral Foundations Dictionary (MFD) was developed to operationalize moral values in the text. In this study, we present MoralStrength, a lexicon of approximately 1,000 lemmas, obtained as an extension of the Moral Foundations Dictionary, based on WordNet synsets. Moreover, for each lemma it provides with a crowdsourced numeric assessment of Moral Valence, indicating the strength with which a lemma is expressing the specific value. We evaluated the predictive potentials of this moral lexicon, defining three utilization approaches of increased complexity, ranging from lemmas' statistical properties to a deep learning approach of word embeddings based on semantic similarity. Logistic regression models trained on the features extracted from MoralStrength, significantly outperformed the current state-of-the-art, reaching an F1-score of 87.6% over the previous 62.4% (p-value<0.01), and an average F1-Score of 86.25% over six different datasets. Such findings pave the way for further research, allowing for an in-depth understanding of moral narratives in text for a wide range of social issues

The Neuroscience of Moral Judgment: Empirical and Philosophical Developments

We chart how neuroscience and philosophy have together advanced our understanding of moral judgment with implications for when it goes well or poorly. The field initially focused on brain areas associated with reason versus emotion in the moral evaluations of sacrificial dilemmas. But new threads of research have studied a wider range of moral evaluations and how they relate to models of brain development and learning. By weaving these threads together, we are developing a better understanding of the neurobiology of moral judgment in adulthood and to some extent in childhood and adolescence. Combined with rigorous evidence from psychology and careful philosophical analysis, neuroscientific evidence can even help shed light on the extent of moral knowledge and on ways to promote healthy moral development

Sustainable Development Report: Blockchain, the Web3 & the SDGs

This is an output paper of the applied research that was conducted between July 2018 - October 2019 funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and conducted by the Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and RCE Vienna (Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development).Series: Working Paper Series / Institute for Cryptoeconomics / Interdisciplinary Researc

Lookalike Targeting on Others\u27 Journeys: Brand Versus Performance Marketing

Lookalike targeting is a widely used model-based ad targeting approach that uses a seed database of individuals to identify matching “lookalikes” for targeted customer acquisition. An advertiser has to make two key choices: (1) who to seed on and (2) seed-match rank range. First, we find that seeding on others’ journey stage can be effective in new customer acquisition; despite the cold start nature of customer acquisition using Lookalike audiences, third parties can indeed identify factors unobserved to the advertiser that move individuals along the journey and can be correlated with the lookalikes. Further, while journey-based seeding adds no incremental value for brand marketing (click-through), seeding on more downstream stages improves performance marketing (donation) outcomes. Second, we evaluate audience expansion strategies by lowering match ranks between the seed and lookalikes to increase acquisition reach. The drop in effectiveness with lower match rank range is much greater for performance marketing than for brand marketing. Performance marketers can alleviate the problem by making the ad targeting explicit, and thus increase perceived relevance; however, it has no incremental impact for higher match lookalikes. Increasing perceived targeting relevance makes acquisition cost comparable for both high and low match ranks

Sustainable Development Report: Blockchain, the Web3 & the SDGs

This is an output paper of the applied research that was conducted between July 2018 - October 2019 funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and conducted by the Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business and RCE Vienna (Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development).Series: Working Paper Series / Institute for Cryptoeconomics / Interdisciplinary Researc