Organic Farming Development and Agricultural Institutions in Europe: A Study of Six Countries

Cooperation between general agricultural institutions and the organisation of the organic farming sector are key factors for the development of organic farming. This study analyses the relationships of organic farming organisations with other farmers' organisations, agencies of agricultural policy and food market firms in six European countries. On this basis it identifies a path for successful development of organic farming which is adaptable to the special conditions of all European countries. This book presents the most systematic and in-depth comparison of the dynamics of organic farming development to date, providing concrete suggestions for a line of action for everyone with an interest in developing organic farming

Opaque Service Virtualisation: A Practical Tool for Emulating Endpoint Systems

Large enterprise software systems make many complex interactions with other services in their environment. Developing and testing for production-like conditions is therefore a very challenging task. Current approaches include emulation of dependent services using either explicit modelling or record-and-replay approaches. Models require deep knowledge of the target services while record-and-replay is limited in accuracy. Both face developmental and scaling issues. We present a new technique that improves the accuracy of record-and-replay approaches, without requiring prior knowledge of the service protocols. The approach uses Multiple Sequence Alignment to derive message prototypes from recorded system interactions and a scheme to match incoming request messages against prototypes to generate response messages. We use a modified Needleman-Wunsch algorithm for distance calculation during message matching. Our approach has shown greater than 99% accuracy for four evaluated enterprise system messaging protocols. The approach has been successfully integrated into the CA Service Virtualization commercial product to complement its existing techniques.Comment: In Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion (pp. 202-211). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1510.0142

IRRIGATION DISTRICT ADOPTION OF WATER CONSERVING RATE STRUCTURES

A binary choice model was used to identify the attributes that influence irrigation district adoption of conservation rate structures. Using principles of rate design and irrigation district administration as a framework, measures of irrigation district rate structure objectives and physical and economic conditions were developed. The factors investigated characterize the constraints under which districts operate, value and cost of water, quantity of water delivered and revenue risk for districts. Rate structure adoption was predicted with over 75% accuracy. Both significant and non-significant factors are key to understanding rate choice. Districts were more likely to adopt conservation rate pricing when the cost of water to farmers was greater, higher value crops were grown and in areas with warmer and longer growing seasons. These conditions may be interpreted as reflecting the presence of greater opportunity costs in allocating water between low and higher valued uses. Conservation rate pricing was less likely to be adopted by districts where the proportion of alfalfa to total acreage was higher and with higher per acre deliveries of water. Somewhat surprisingly, annual variation in water deliveries (which should increase the risk of revenue shortfalls) and size of the district (larger districts being more sophisticated) have little bearing on the type of rate structure adopted.Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Turning Characteristics of U.S. Coast Guard Icebreaker M-5

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/96616/1/39015087359009.pd

EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CONSERVATION WATER-PRICING PROGRAMS: REPLY

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CONSERVATION WATER-PRICING PROGRAMS

Charging farmers increasing block prices for irrigation deliveries is advocated as a means of encouraging agricultural water conservation in the West. We formulated a model of a hypothetical irrigated river basin to investigate the hyrdro-economic circumstances in which such pricing leads to water conservation. Our results indicate that increasing delivery prices may encourage irrigators to make adjustments with countervailing impacts on consumptive water use and conservation. Whether these countervailing impacts combine to conserve water or increase its consumptive use must be resolved empirically. An alternative resolution of this ambiguity is to assess water prices in terms of consumptive use.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,