Diálogos entre a administração da produção para autogestão e a agroecologia: o estudo de caso de dois cursos de extensão para gestão de cooperativas na agricultura familiar

This research consists of a qualitative, exploratory study with the aim of analyzing conceptual and methodological elements that may contribute to the production planning of agroecological farming. It contains a case study following two extension courses on management of family farming cooperatives. One was carried out from October to December 2015, with a 36-hour workload; the other was held from October 2016 to October 2017, with a total of 160 hours. Both courses were developed in partnership with the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST). The data was obtained from documentary research, participant observation during the design and implementation of the two courses, and through a group survey carried out with one of the workers’ collectives that had of its members as a student in the second course. As a theoretical framework, a bibliographical review was done on agroecology and selfmanagement production, considering that these areas have great potential to contribute with strategies for training and organization of cooperative work in rural areas. An emancipatory, creative work in which the activities of design, planning and execution are inseparable. In this sense, we conclude the analysis by pointing out some considerations and issues to be taken into account in training proposals that link agroecology and self-management production.A pesquisa se constitui em um estudo qualitativo de caráter exploratório e teve como objetivo analisar elementos conceituais e metodológicos que contribuam para o planejamento da produção agroecológica. Para tal, conta com um estudo de caso que percorre dois cursos de extensão voltados para a gestão de cooperativas na agricultura familiar. Um realizado entre outubro e dezembro de 2015, com carga horária de 36 horas; outro realizado entre outubro de 2016 e outubro de 2017, com carga horária de 160 horas. Ambos construídos em parceria com o Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra. Os dados foram obtidos através de pesquisa documental, de observação participante durante a concepção e execução dos dois cursos, e por meio de uma entrevista coletiva realizada com um dos grupos que teve um dos seus membros enquanto educando do segundo curso. Como suporte teórico, foi realizada revisão bibliográfica sobre a agroecologia e a administração da produção, por entender que se tratam de áreas com grande potencial de contribuir para estratégias de formação e organização do trabalho cooperativo no campo. Um trabalho emancipador, criativo, em que as atividades de concepção, planejamento e execução estejam novamente indissociáveis. Neste sentido, concluímos a análise com o apontamento de algumas considerações e questões para se levar em conta em propostas de formação que articulem a agroecologia e a administração da produção para a autogestão

Caracterização morfológica e proteolítica de Aspergillus niger isolado da biblioteca do IFPE - campus Recife / Morphological and proteolytical characterization of Aspergillus niger isolated from the IFPE - campus Recife library

Os fungos anemófilos tem se destacado como um dos principais agentes causadores de infecções respiratórias em ambientes climatizados artificialmente, devido a sua potencialidade como produtor de enzimas extracelulares, principalmente as proteases. O presente trabalho teve como objetivo caracterizar morfologicamente o isolado fúngico C4(27) e avaliar a sua capacidade em produzir protease. A identificação do isolado fúngico foi realizada através do estudo de características macro e microscópicas. Para determinação da atividade proteolítica, discos de micélio provenientes de colônias jovens foram inoculados centralmente em placas de Petri contendo o meio ágar-leite. Avaliou-se a atividade enzimática pela formação de halos de degradação do fungo crescido no meio especifico e determinação do Índice de Relação Enzimática. O isolado fúngico testado mostrou reação positiva para produção enzimática, apresentando índice de relação enzimática superior a 2,0. Este dado sugere que o fungo em estudo é um microrganismo promissor na produção de protease

Hábitos de consumo e impacto ambiental: como o consumidor lida com as necessidades de consumo do dia a dia

This work aimed to evaluate the socio-economic profile of economically active people aged between 18 and 30 years and the influence of advertising in relation to purchasing power taking into account the potential environmental impact caused by the bad habits of consumption . The research was conducted using a questionnaire structured with 11 objective questions and one subjective question. The income level, educational level, debts on income, level of representation in the purchase decision, advertising and which influences over purchasing activity   that produces more residue. The majority (55%) of the respondents were female, had completed secondary education (28%), 59% have income range up to one monthly wage, 46% committed over 70% of their monthly income with debts. The price was the determining factor in the purchase decision for most respondents at different educational levels. All respondents, regardless of education level, cited food and shopping in supermarkets as activities that generate the greatest amount of residue after consumption. The advertising influences the buying decision in 73% of respondents. Younger individuals and with low educational level individuals need to undertake a portion of their income on the purchase of basic items for survival, end up compromising much of the income with basic expenses. Educational campaigns focused on natural resource economics could be used reducing the environmental impact generated by the overconsumption.Neste trabalho objetivou-se avaliar o perfil sócio-econômico das pessoas economicamente ativas com idade entre 18 e 30 anos no município de Cuiabá-MT, e a influência da propaganda no que se refere ao poder de compra levando-se em consideração a potencialidade do impacto ambiental ocasionado pelos maus hábitos de consumo. A pesquisa foi desenvolvida utilizando um questionário estruturado de 11 questões objetivas e uma subjetiva, onde foram avaliados a faixa de renda, nível educacional, débitos sobre a renda, grau de representatividade na decisão de compra, influencia da propaganda e qual a atividade de compra que produz mais resíduo. A maioria (55%) dos entrevistados é do sexo feminino, tem ensino médio completo (28%), 59% tem faixa de renda de até 1 salário mínimo, 46% compromete acima de 70% da renda com despesas. O preço foi fator determinante na decisão de compra para a maioria dos entrevistados em diferentes níveis educacionais. Todos os entrevistados, independente do nível de escolaridade, citaram a alimentação e compras em supermercados como atividades que geram a maior quantidade de resíduo, após o consumo. A propaganda influencia na decisão da compra em 73% dos entrevistados. Os indivíduos mais jovens e com menor escolaridade, por necessidade de comprometer uma parte da renda com a aquisição de itens básicos para a sobrevivência, acabam comprometendo grande parte da renda com despesas básicas. Campanhas educacionais voltadas para economia dos recursos naturais poderiam ser utilizadas na tentativa de diminuir o impacto ambiental gerado pelo consumo exagerado

Nutritional status and growth of indigenous Xavante children, Central Brazil

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The aim of this study was to characterize the nutritional status of Xavante Indian children less than 10 years of age in Central Brazil and to evaluate the hypothesis of an association between child nutrition and socioeconomic differentiation in this population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross-sectional study was conducted in July 2006 that included all children under the age of 10 from the Xavante village Pimentel Barbosa in Mato Grosso, Brazil. The data collected included weight, height, and sociodemographic information. Sociodemographic data were used to generate two indices ("income" and "wealth") and to determine the proportion of adults in each household. Descriptive analyses were performed for weight-for-age (W/A), height-for-age (H/A), and weight-for-height (W/H) using the NCHS and the WHO growth references. Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted using H/A and W/A as a response variables.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of a total of 246 children under the age of ten residing in the village, 232 (94.3%) were evaluated. Following the NCHS reference, 5.6% of children under the age of ten presented low W/A and 14.7% presented low H/A. Among children under the age of five, deficit percentages for weight and height were 4.5% and 29.9%, respectively, following the WHO curves. Among children < 2 years of age, H/A index variability was found to be directly related to child's age and inversely related to the proportion of adults in the household. Maternal BMI was positively associated with growth for children from 2 to 4 years of age, explaining 11.5% of the z-score variability for the H/A index. For children 5 years of age and older, the wealth index and maternal height were positively associated with H/A. No significant associations were found using W/A as the dependent variable.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study demonstrated that undernutrition, in particular linear growth deficit, is a notable health issue for Xavante children. These findings contrast with the nutritional profile observed among Brazilian children nationally, which is characterized by a sharp decline in child undernutrition in recent decades, even in the poorest regions of the country. This discrepancy calls attention to the persistent health disparities that exist between indigenous and non-indigenous people in Brazil.</p

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Geography and ecology shape the phylogenetic composition of Amazonian tree communities

Aim: Amazonia hosts more tree species from numerous evolutionary lineages, both young and ancient, than any other biogeographic region. Previous studies have shown that tree lineages colonized multiple edaphic environments and dispersed widely across Amazonia, leading to a hypothesis, which we test, that lineages should not be strongly associated with either geographic regions or edaphic forest types. Location: Amazonia. Taxon: Angiosperms (Magnoliids; Monocots; Eudicots). Methods: Data for the abundance of 5082 tree species in 1989 plots were combined with a mega-phylogeny. We applied evolutionary ordination to assess how phylogenetic composition varies across Amazonia. We used variation partitioning and Moran\u27s eigenvector maps (MEM) to test and quantify the separate and joint contributions of spatial and environmental variables to explain the phylogenetic composition of plots. We tested the indicator value of lineages for geographic regions and edaphic forest types and mapped associations onto the phylogeny. Results: In the terra firme and várzea forest types, the phylogenetic composition varies by geographic region, but the igapó and white-sand forest types retain a unique evolutionary signature regardless of region. Overall, we find that soil chemistry, climate and topography explain 24% of the variation in phylogenetic composition, with 79% of that variation being spatially structured (R$^{2}$ = 19% overall for combined spatial/environmental effects). The phylogenetic composition also shows substantial spatial patterns not related to the environmental variables we quantified (R$^{2}$ = 28%). A greater number of lineages were significant indicators of geographic regions than forest types. Main Conclusion: Numerous tree lineages, including some ancient ones (>66 Ma), show strong associations with geographic regions and edaphic forest types of Amazonia. This shows that specialization in specific edaphic environments has played a long-standing role in the evolutionary assembly of Amazonian forests. Furthermore, many lineages, even those that have dispersed across Amazonia, dominate within a specific region, likely because of phylogenetically conserved niches for environmental conditions that are prevalent within regions

Geographic patterns of tree dispersal modes in Amazonia and their ecological correlates

Aim: To investigate the geographic patterns and ecological correlates in the geographic distribution of the most common tree dispersal modes in Amazonia (endozoochory, synzoochory, anemochory and hydrochory). We examined if the proportional abundance of these dispersal modes could be explained by the availability of dispersal agents (disperser-availability hypothesis) and/or the availability of resources for constructing zoochorous fruits (resource-availability hypothesis). Time period: Tree-inventory plots established between 1934 and 2019. Major taxa studied: Trees with a diameter at breast height (DBH) ≥ 9.55 cm. Location: Amazonia, here defined as the lowland rain forests of the Amazon River basin and the Guiana Shield. Methods: We assigned dispersal modes to a total of 5433 species and morphospecies within 1877 tree-inventory plots across terra-firme, seasonally flooded, and permanently flooded forests. We investigated geographic patterns in the proportional abundance of dispersal modes. We performed an abundance-weighted mean pairwise distance (MPD) test and fit generalized linear models (GLMs) to explain the geographic distribution of dispersal modes. Results: Anemochory was significantly, positively associated with mean annual wind speed, and hydrochory was significantly higher in flooded forests. Dispersal modes did not consistently show significant associations with the availability of resources for constructing zoochorous fruits. A lower dissimilarity in dispersal modes, resulting from a higher dominance of endozoochory, occurred in terra-firme forests (excluding podzols) compared to flooded forests. Main conclusions: The disperser-availability hypothesis was well supported for abiotic dispersal modes (anemochory and hydrochory). The availability of resources for constructing zoochorous fruits seems an unlikely explanation for the distribution of dispersal modes in Amazonia. The association between frugivores and the proportional abundance of zoochory requires further research, as tree recruitment not only depends on dispersal vectors but also on conditions that favour or limit seedling recruitment across forest types