Potential impacts of a Turkish EU-membership on agri-food markets

This paper examines possible impacts of a Turkish accession to the EU on the agricultural markets in Turkey and the EU. AGMEMOD, an econometric, dynamic, multi-market, partial equilibrium economic model for EU agriculture at Member State level, has been extended with a model for the Turkish agricultural sector and afterwards applied to gain quantitative insights into Turkish accession effects. To establish a model for Turkey, the implementation of the model equations required parameter estimates, or the specification of synthetic model parameters. A database with time series on Turkish agricultural production, market balances and prices, macroeconomic variables and policy variables was developed in order to estimate such model parameters and to build an operational Turkish agriculture sector model. Most results show that the dominant impact of the Turkish accession on Turkish agriculture is a reduction of domestic producer prices, which induces further market effects. The - mostly decoupled - CAP support payments will induce smaller incentives to increase production than those which Turkish farmers receive prior to the EU accession. In Turkey effects of accession to the EU will be mostly negative for crop producers (except for tobacco), whereas the consumers are expected to gain from lower market prices. In contrast, producers of sheep meat, broiler and dairy milk could gain from an accession due to lower feed costs

Assessing the Spatial and Temporal Variation of Output-Input Elasticities of Agricultural Production in Turkey

Turkey, Agricultural Reform and Implementation Project, geographically weighted regression, Agricultural and Food Policy, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Q18, C3,

The Implications of Biofuel Policy in Turkey

Turkish Energy Regulatory Agency (EMRA) announced in September 2011 that biofuel blending will be mandatory starting from 2013 and 2014 for bioethanol (2%) and biodiesel (1%) respectively. The blending ratio will be increased to 3 percent for bioethanol in 2014 and biodiesel in 2016. This study aims to evaluate the net trade impacts of the blending regulation. In Turkey, sugar beet based ethanol production seems feasible and sustainable. Mandatory blending ratio will increase the capacity utilization of existing plants. Bioethanol blending (2%) will reduce oil imports by 255.2 million US Dollar in 2013. Contribution impact of bioethanol production will be much greater by 2016. But, since Turkey is already a net importer of oilseeds biodiesel, blending implementation will deteriorate the foreign trade balance and 2 percent blending will bring around 488.5 million US Dollar extra import increase in 2015. Therefore, net trade impact of mandatory blending is expected to be negative.  Keywords: Sustainable biofuel production; biofuel policy impact; energy policy JEL Classifications: Q16; Q

Recognising the regenerative impacts of Canadian women tourism social entrepreneurs through a feminist ethic of care lens

Purpose – The overarching aim of this project is to understand the role women tourism social entrepreneurs (TSEs) play in contributing to regenerative practices in Canada. Design/methodology/approach – Semi-structured interviews were carried out with women food TSEs with snowball sampling. This paper challenges the assumption that the masculine experience is the human experience. Accordingly, this research is informed by a feminist ethic of care lens to recognise the important role of Canadian women TSEs. Methodologically, the authors employed the strategies of a constructivist grounded theory to guide the analysis (Charmaz, 2011). This process involved carefully engaging in a close line by line reading of the transcripts, developing codes based on the authors’ dealings with the data including summarising, synthesising and sorting the data (Charmaz, 2011). Findings – The analysis revealed three categories: (1) Adopting a regenerative mindset and enhancing well-being, (2) Supporting the consumption of real food and (3) Educating communities for regenerative and just futures. The analysis revealed the importance of women TSEs in adopting a regenerative and caring mindset to enhance the well-being of their communities and beyond. Research limitations/implications – The study focusses on the learnings from 11 entrepreneurs from Canada. There is a scope to expand the discussion with more interviews. The impact of this pandemic on the small businesses resulted in affecting the researchers’ participation by presenting some unique challenges in participant recruitment. Maybe the studies in the near future will focus on grounding the research papers based on other sexual orientations and indigenous social entrepreneurs. Practical implications – The authors hope future studies centre diversity and attend to the role of women in their communities to better under the diverse contributions. The work presented here is part of a broader study on the role and impact of women TSEs and so only reveals the tip of the Canadian iceberg. Forthcoming studies will attend to some of the gender-specific barriers faced by women TSEs and the supports required particularly in the wake of COVID-19. The authors hope other scholars continue to build on this work, adopting feminist approaches to enhance our understanding of the role women play in contributing to just, caring and regenerative futures. Social implications – Contributing to Higgins-Desbiolles and Monga's (2021) in-depth case study using an ethic of care to examine an Australian events business supporting homeless individuals, the analysis of the 11 in-depth interviews with Canadian TSE provides evidence of alternative ways women are delivering social value. Using an ethic of care lens has elicited the impacts created by the informants and the ripple effects particularly in light of regenerative practices which are crucial in the tourism sector as borders and destinations reopen to tourism as noted by Ateljevic (2020). Originality/value – There are few studies in the tourism social entrepreneurship literature that recognise the agency and centres the vocies of women. Kimbu and Ngoasong (2016) made a call for more research to understand how women engage in social entrepreneurial activities and benefit their local communities. There are limited analyses on regenerative tourism in practice in the scholarly literature. To respond to this gap the authors examine the regenerative practices of women TSEs in Canada

Understanding How Social Entrepreneurs Fit into the Tourism Discourse

This chapter discusses how social entrepreneurs fit into the existing tourism discourse. It examines four areas of literature in particular, tourism entrepreneurs, sustainability, destination development and intrapreneurship, and analyzes how introducing the concept of social entrepreneurs into these discussions is useful, and contributes to our understanding. Furthermore the paper illustrates that as social entrepreneurs are relevant to a broad range of issues in the tourism literature this should prevent the development of research silos where social entrepreneurship scholars seek out their own vein of research. The nexus of common ground and interests, as displayed in this chapter, should enhance the development of research, thought and understanding of social entrepreneurs within the field as a whole The key argument is that research on social entrepreneurs is not just relevant for those interested in entrepreneurs it also effects our thinking on issues such as destination development, relationships between stakeholders, tourism policy and sustainability. The chapter concludes with a wide range of questions for further research

Predicting the Performance of Highway Embankment Slopes

Resilience of transportation infrastructure, such as highway embankments, is critical to avoiding commuter delays and costly repairs. The majority of highway embankments in Louisiana and Texas are in marginal condition because the high-plasticity clays that are used during construction will moisten with time to significantly lower strengths. The ring shear tests demonstrate that the Gamez and Stark [1] empirical correlations are applicable to Texas and Louisiana soils. The soil water retention curves at each site were fitted to the Van Genuchten model [2]. For example, the air entry values vary from 0.013 to 0.053 kPa-1 in Louisiana and from 0.008 to 0.01 kPa-1 in Texas. The implications of this wide range of air entry values is that the matric suction pressure required to saturate and desaturate controls the pore-water pressure build-up during a rainfall event

Determination of the size distribution of non-spherical nanoparticles by electric birefringence-based methods

The in situ determination of the size distribution of dispersed non-spherical nanoparticles is an essential characterization tool for the investigation and use of colloidal suspensions. In this work, we test a size characterization method based on the measurement of the transient behaviour of the birefringence induced in the dispersions by pulsed electric fields. The specific shape of such relaxations depends on the distribution of the rotational diffusion coefficient of the suspended particles. We analyse the measured transient birefringence with three approaches: the stretched-exponential, Watson-Jennings, and multiexponential methods. These are applied to six different types of rod-like and planar particles: PTFE rods, goethite needles, single- and double-walled carbon nanotubes, sodium montmorillonite particles and gibbsite platelets. The results are compared to electron microscopy and dynamic light scattering measurements. The methods here considered provide good or excellent results in all cases, proving that the analysis of the transient birefringence is a powerful tool to obtain complete size distributions of non-spherical particles in suspension.Financial support of this investigation by Junta de Andalucía, Spain (grant No. PE2012-FQM0694) and University of Granada (Program “Proyectos de investigación precompetitivos”) is gratefully acknowledged

We’re All Infected: Legal Personhood, Bare Life and The Walking Dead

This article argues that greater theoretical attention should be paid to the figure of the zombie in the fields of law, cultural studies and philosophy. Using The Walking Dead as a point of critical departure concepts of legal personhood are interrogated in relation to permanent vegetative states, bare life and the notion of the third person. Ultimately, the paper recommends a rejection of personhood; instead favouring a legal and philosophical engagement with humanity and embodiment. Personhood, it is suggested, creates a barrier in law allowing individuals in certain contexts (and in certain embodied states) to be rendered non-persons and thus outside the scope of legal rights. An approach that rejects personhood in favour of embodiment would allow individuals to enjoy their rights without being subject to such discrimination. It is also suggested that the concept of the human, itself complicated by the figure of the zombie, allows for legal engagement with a greater number of putative rights claimants including admixed embryos, cyborgs and the zombie

A Critical Commentary on the SDGs and the Role of Tourism

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework provides a set of 17 goals aiming to enhance global well-being by reducing poverty, enhancing health outcomes, responding to gender equality, and mobilizing social justice and peace efforts. Tourism has been centered as playing a key role in marshaling the SDGs, mainly due to its economic impact as a leading global sector. With the onset of the pandemic, it is incumbent upon scholars to take the pulse and consider the broader backdrop inhibiting SDG progress, with the intention of considering how tourism may be a vehicle for progressing the goals. As such, our analysis may serve to be useful for national and local governments, policy advisors, tourism establishments, and enterprises, as well as visitors and host communities. Specifically, we need to attend to some of the challenges inhibiting progress, scrutinize the use of language, which may lead to misinterpretation, and attend to the lack of clarity for building policies supporting decision making. Thus, the aim of this commentary is to examine some of the critiques and challenges inhibiting the realization of the goals, including a lack of awareness, and understanding of the SDGs, including what each goal entails, the division of power, the role of governance, stakeholders, and financial support required for policy and decision making, along with addressing the misconceptions surrounding the implementation of sustainable approaches. Understanding some of the critiques and challenges of the SDGs may improve our understanding of the potential role the tourism sector may play in progressing the goals