A win-win for legume mixtures

The inter-relationship between food production and biodiversity is now well established. The ecosystem services provided by the organisms within the environment include, for example, nutrient cycling, pest regulation and pollination, to name but a few. However, perhaps the greatest challenge now facing agricultural production is to find ways of enhancing these ecosystem services, while at the same time increasing food production – particularly in light of food security issues. A range of farm and landscape management options include ‘setting aside’ land for wildlife. However, some proponents argue that such land should be used for food production. While the debate continues, there is no doubt that a large body of scientific evidence from the last three decades highlights the wildlife benefits of organic farming. This article will describe how the Legume LINK project has identified a win-win system for biodiversity conservation and increased productivity through legume-base fertility building. Although this project has focused on organic farming systems, it is of direct relevance to non-organic production, particularly with the increasing interest in legumes across the industry

The effects of win-win conditions on revenue-sharing contracts

This paper studies revenue-sharing contracts in distribution chains in the presence of win-win conditions. Revenue-sharing contracts are a mechanism to coordinate the firms in a distribution chain. Under these contracts the retailer shares its revenue with the supplier in exchange for a lower wholesale price. The win-win conditions are natural conditions requiring that the profit of any firm may not decrease after implementing the revenue-sharing contract. If these conditions are not met, that is, if at least one firm is confronted with decreased profits, the firms will not agree upon signing the contract and the revenue-sharing contract will not be implemented. We show that the win-win conditions result in a smaller range of contracts being offered by the supplier. More important, in case of multiple competing retailers there may be no revenue-sharing contract satisfying these conditions. Hence, in the presence of win-win conditions revenue-sharing contracts are not suitable for distribution chains with a supplier and multiple competing retailers. For these chains we present a simple alternative coordination mechanism that coordinates the chain and satisfies all win-win conditions. \u

Use of mangroves for aquaculture: Myanmar.

Aquaculture has only started to develop rapidly in the past few decades, due to better knowledge of culture species, improved methodologies and techniques in breeding, nutrition and increasing demand for food fish of high-value species such as shrimps, sea bass and groupers. Mangrove deforestation has an impact on shrimp culture itself, the success of the latter (when traditional culture method is used) depends on stocking of wild fry. For semi-intensive and intensive shrimp culture, the number of wild caught spawners may decrease because wild shrimp populations also use mangrove swamps as its feeding ground. Other negative effects of mangrove destruction to make way to shrimp ponds, include water pollution from pond effluents, sedimentation from the release of solid materials from pond, interruption of the tidal water flow, dwindling natural shrimp and fish stock due to increased pollution or product contamination due to indiscriminate use of chemicals. Chemicals and drugs (antibiotic) should not be used in fish and shrimp culture for prevention and control of bacteria and viral diseases. In order to ensure the sustainable development of aquaculture, it is important to bear in mind the interdependence of technology and natural resource under various socioeconomic setting

Bonus, effort, costs, market size and teams' performance

This paper examines the effects of a win bonus, effort, costs and team size, on the demand for talented players, the win percentage and the profits of small and big teams. Teams play a Cournot game, under the following objective functions: (i) teams maximize profits, (ii) teams maximize win percentage, (iii) the small team maximizes profit and the big win percentage, and (iv) vice versa. The effects are based on a priori selected parameter values and bounds, as well as from optimal solutions of non-linear programs, by maximizing anyone of the four win percentage formulae, derived from the respective Cournot reaction functions.Teams; talents; effort; win bonus; win percentage; competitive balance; profits