Estimate of the Potential Adoption of Genetically Modified Cotton by Farmers in Southern Spain and its Economic Implications

This paper analyses the potential adoption and economic on-farm impact of Bt cotton in the Andalusia region (southern Spain). Survey data have shown that, on average, 58% of the responding farmers know about genetically modified (GM) cotton. Another outcome of the survey is that 95% of the farmers declaring that they know about GM cotton would be willing to grow Bt cotton. In the main cotton-producing districts, farmers' attitudes are positive, and they would be willing to adopt the technology. In areas where the crop is more important, the farmers who are willing to adopt Bt cotton represent over 75% of the area under cotton. As regards the on-farm economic impact resulting from a potential adoption, the assessment is that savings on the cost of direct pest control will be achieved by reducing the number of insecticide treatments. This analysis is applied to a representative Andalusian cotton farm. On the basis of the worst-case scenario derived from a review of the literature on the economic performance of Bt cotton, a reduction of 2.6 insecticide treatments is assumed. For our representative farm this would result in a cost saving of € 148.2 per hectare.biotechnology, cotton, economic impact, Andalusia, Agricultural and Food Policy, Q16, Q20, Q12, O52,

La autogestión del Trabajo Social y la perspectiva del investigador

The intents to delimit what is research in Social Work are always approximate. To establish the investigations that are more useful for Social Work can be convenient to recall the conditions that offer disciplinary character to their practices: elements that would endow of scientific orientation to the Social Work exercise. The author carries out a brief one travel through those elements that make operational the presence of the scientific method (the procedure structure, the sources of scientific information, the presence of the planning paradigm, the theorisation into the intervention projects)

Control of the 1-d wave equation from an interior moving point

We consider the one-dimensional linear wave equation with Dirichlet boundary conditions in a bounded interval, and with a control acting on a single point which moves following a regular trajectory in time. We analyze the exact controllability problem

Novel Ruthenium-Silver PTA-Based Polymers and Their Behavior in Water

New coordination polymers based on two metal-containing moieties Ru–Ag are synthesized: Na[RuCpX(PTA)-μ-(PTA)-1κP:2κ2N-AgX2]∞ (X = Cl (1), Br (2), I (3)). Characterization is performed by NMR, UV-visible and FT-IR spectroscopy, optical-electron microscopy, and elemental analyses (C, H, N, S). Light scattering is employed to characterize the colloidal particles growth by polymer self-assembling. These structures are stable over a broad range of pH and exhibit thermally-driven swelling, thus resembling a typical thermosensitive hydrogel

Propuesta de escenarios combinados de política agrícola y de aguas

La agricultura de regadío, primera consumidora de agua en Europa e imp ortante contribuidora a la producción agraria, se encuentra hoy con la necesidad de adaptarse a fuertes fuerzas de cambio derivadas de la política agrícola (PAC) y de las política de aguas (principalmente la DMA). Como paso previo a la medición de los posibles impactos, el presente trabajo tiene como objetivo la definición de escenarios combinados de ambas políticas. Los escenarios son afirmaciones sobre posibles futuros. No obstante, no son predicciones sobre lo que acontecerá. Son afirmaciones de lo que es posible, de prospecciones más que de predicciones sobre el futuro. Responden a preguntas con la forma “que sucedería si...”. Después de construir unos escenarios, primero de política agrícola y después de política de aguas, este trabajo concluye proponiendo cuatro escenarios integrados los cuales pueden ser usados para medir la respuesta del sector ante las fuerzas del cambio

Análisis y propuesta de estrategia de desarrollo para la gestión ambiental de los residuos urbanos en los municipios de Andalucía

El trabajo presenta un análisis y diagnóstico de la gestión ambiental de los municipios andaluces basados en una muestra amplia de los mismos. Se estudian, medios materiales y humanos así como prioridades políticas de los gestores. Se presta atención a aspectos económicos como son el gasto en gestión de residuos y la financiación de los mismos a través de las tasas municipales. Una vez estudiada la situación se detectan los principales problemas y se propone una estrategia de solución a partir de la metodología del marco lógico de proyectos

Preferences stability: A measure of preferences changes over time

Producción CientíficaTraditionally, preferences have been considered stable although there are growing evidences that such stability is a mere theoretical assumption. Attending to this fact, it should be interesting to measure how much stability preferences provide in order to improve decision making processes. Surprisingly, no research has been found on measuring preferences stability. To overcome this drawback, this paper proposes a novel approach for measuring the stability of preferences and also for improving understanding of current and future decisions. In order to be faithful to reality, this research considers decisions like complete pre-orders on a set of alternatives. Following this reasoning, this paper provides the general concept of decision stability measure as well as two specific measures: the local and the global decision stability measure. Moreover, the main features of the novel approach are examined, including several mathematical results on the behaviour of the proposed measure. And eventually, this contribution develops two real cases of study, with in-depth analysis of preferences behaviour and their stability over time. Specifically, the first one explores into the characteristics of Spanish citizens' voting behaviour and the second one attempts to analyse European citizens' preferences about passenger car market.Este trabajo forma parte del proyecto de investigación con financiación nacional: MEC-FEDER Grant ECO2016-77900-

Reaching social consensus family budgets: The Spanish case

The study of family budgets has been traditionally used to analyse consumers’ behaviour and estimate cost-of-living since the end of 19th century. Generally speaking, the computation of the budgets has been based on two different methodologies, the prescriptive and the descriptive method. Both present several drawbacks like the comparison among different areas, family types and over time. This paper proposes a new methodology for reaching family budgets, namely social consensus family budgets, to overcome such problems and examine the main features of the novel approach. The suggested method uses the minimization of the differences with respect to the consumer’s preferences to obtain a solution that summarizes single behaviour into a social preference. This approach is especially conceived for preferences on possibly related-expenditure groups. In addition, several algorithms are introduced to compute the social family budgets. Finally, the contribution includes the Spanish case as an example of reaching some social consensus family budgets in order to show the operational character and intuitive interpretation of the proposal approach.Este trabajo forma parte del proyecto de investigación con financiación nacional: MEC-FEDER Grant ECO2016-77900-

Adoption of GMHT Crops: Coexistence Policy Consequences in the European Union

Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries,