Health and welfare of organic livestock

Animal health and welfare are important principles of organic animal husbandry. In the Netherlands organic animal husbandry has proven to perform better than the conventional sector on many aspects of animal welfare. The Dutch organic animal husbandry sector has recognised animal health and welfare as crucial and maintains a strong focus on further improvement. Dutch scientists are working to advance the health and welfare of organically kept animals. Additionally, they focus on innovations and directly applicable solutions to specific problems concerning diseases and behaviour. This research is often carried out in close collaboration with farmer

Prevention and control of weeds, pests and diseases

Weed control still requires major investments of money and labour in organic arable farming and field vegetable cultivation. For this reason, current research is focused to a large extent on the development of weed control strategies. These incorporate prevention as well as mechanical methods, and cover a range of approaches. From inexpensive techniques to very innovative technologies. Research into pests and diseases primarily focuses on improving systems and preventing infestation. However, even with maximum prevention measures some pests and diseases still cause unacceptable damage. For these residual problems control measures are being develope

Animal production and feeding

Organic livestock farmers will try to accommodate the natural needs and behaviour of their animals as much as possible. They pay extra attention to animal health and welfare, but also set high standards for housing, outside access and feed. Dutch researchers are looking for practical solutions to the problems that currently limit the sustainability and growth of organic animal production. The ultimate objective of current research is to ensure that Dutch organic dairy farms use organic rations made up of locally or regionally produced raw materials, and that they supply manure for the production of these raw materials

Organic agriculture in the Netherlands

Dutch organic agriculture has unique characteristics and peculiarities. It is still a relatively small sector compared to conventional agriculture in the Netherlands. However, its market share is growing and organic agriculture leads the way in terms of sustainability and innovation

People and society

Organic agriculture has excellent opportunities to create strong links between the environment it operates in, the people who live there and local nature and landscape. The Dutch organic sector aspires to strengthen these links and it is already well on its way. Together with researchers and stakeholders new concepts are being developed and put into practic

Research on organic agriculture in the Netherlands : organisation, methodology and results

Chapters: 1. Organic agriculture in the Netherlands; 2. Dutch research on organic agriculture: approaches and characteristics; 3. Dutch knowledge infrastructure for organic agricultur'; 4. Sustainable systems; 5. Good soil: a good start; 6. Robust varieties and vigorous propagation material; 7. Prevention and control of weeds, pests and diseases; 8. Health and welfare of organic livestock; 9. Animal production and feeding; 10. Special branches: organic greenhouse production, bulbs, ornamentals and aquaculture; 11. Healthfulness and quality of products; 12. Economy, market and chain; 13. People and society. A publication of Wageningen UR and Louis Bolk Institut

Robust varieties and vigorous propagation material

Research on organic plant breeding and propagation material in the Netherlands is booming. This research is carried out in close cooperation with growers, breeders and the seed industry. Is organic breeding and propagation really different from the conventional system? And which types of varieties are needed

Evolution of Market Heuristics

The time evolution of aggregate economic variables, such as stock prices, is affected by market expectations of individual investors. Neo-classical economic theory assumes that individuals form expectations rationally, thus enforcing prices to track economic fundamentals and leading to an efficient allocation of resources. However, laboratory experiments with human subjects have shown that individuals do not behave fully rational but instead follow simple heuristics. In laboratory markets prices may show persistent deviations from fundamentals similar to the large swings observed in real stock prices. Here we show that evolutionary selection among simple forecasting heuristics can explain coordination of individual behavior leading to three different aggregate outcomes observed in recent laboratory market forecasting experiments: slow monotonic price convergence, oscillatory dampened price fluctuations and persistent price oscillations. In our model forecasting strategies are selected every period from a small population of plausible heuristics, such as adaptive expectations and trend following rules. Individuals adapt their strategies over time, based on the relative forecasting performance of the heuristics. As a result, the evolutionary switching mechanism exhibits path dependence and matches individual forecasting behavior as well as aggregate market outcomes in the experiments. Our results are in line with recent work on agent-based models of interaction and contribute to a behavioral explanation of universal features of financial markets.

Multiple Steady States, Limit Cycles and Chaotic Attractors in Evolutionary Games with Logit Dynamics

This paper investigates, by means of simple, three and four strategy games, the occurrence of periodic and chaotic behaviour in a smooth version of the Best Response Dynamics, the Logit Dynamics. The main finding is that, unlike Replicator Dynamics, generic Hopf bifurcation and thus, stable limit cycles, do occur under the Logit Dynamics, even for three strategy games. Moreover, we show that the Logit Dynamics displays another bifurcation which cannot to occur under the Replicator Dynamics: the fold catastrophe. Finally, we find, in a four strategy game, a period-doubling route to chaotic dynamics under a 'weighted' version of the Logit Dynamics.

Evolutionary Selection of Individual Expectations and Aggregate Outcomes

In recent 'learning to forecast' experiments with human subjects (Hommes, et al. 2005), three different patterns in aggregate asset price behavior have been observed: slow monotonic convergence, permanent oscillations and dampened fluctuations. We construct a simple model of individual learning, based on performance based evolutionary selectionor reinforcement learning among heterogeneous expectations rules, explaining these different aggregate outcomes. Out-of-sample predictive power of our switching model is higher compared to the rational or other homogeneous expectations benchmarks. Our results show that heterogeneity in expectations is crucial to describe individual forecasting behavior as well as aggregate price behavior.