Assessment of Farmers’ Plant Disease Knowledge in Organic Cacao Cultivation

The Alto Beni region on the eastern foothills of the Andes accounts for 90% of certified organic cacao production in Bolivia and other tropical products for the city of La Paz. In the region more than 2200 households strongly depend on the cultivation of cacao. Cacao is cultivated on small holder farms mostly in diversified agroforestry systems. These systems contribute to both the conservation of biodiversity and the food security of the farmers. An outbreak of the frosty pod disease caused by Moniliophthora roreri in 2011 is now threatening these relatively sustainable production systems. Examples all over Latin America showed the abandonment and elimination of cocoa systems and the loss of biodiversity and local revenues after its attack. Frosty pod rot is an extremely invasive and destructive disease causing yield losses of 30–80% after establishment in a region. An efficient and applicable disease management strategy should address both, ecologic and socioeconomic conditions of the entire agro-ecological system. Scientific knowledge must therefore be complemented with the local farmers’ knowledge in general and especially their local knowledge on disease management. The aim of this qualitative study was to gather farmers’ local disease knowledge to building a fundament for the participatory development of a disease management strategy. Data was collected by combined 24 in depth interviews with on-farm field visits. We found that there is a certain lack of ecosystem knowledge among the ethnically diverse farmers group, which might be due to the recent colonisation of the area. Cacao cultivation knowledge is present on a basic level but is unequally distributed and the level of performance of disease prevention and control practices lags behind their level of awareness. It was also found that the process of knowledge formation is ongoing and co-evolving with the active adaptation of the cultivation system. Most sustainable practices related to an additional labour input are strictly challenged by the lack of skilled labour and the migration out of the region into the bigger cities. These constraints should be considered when designing an efficient disease management strategy

Do job creation schemes improve the social integration and well-being of the long-term unemployed?

In this paper we analyze the effects of a German job creation scheme (JCS) on the social integration and well-being of long-term unemployed individuals. Using linked survey and administrative data for participants and a group of matched non-participants, we find significant positive effects of being employed within this program. They are larger for individuals with health impairments and above-average duration of welfare dependence. The program effects decline over time, which cannot be explained by decreasing levels of well-being and social integration of the participants. Instead, this decrease is driven by a rising share of controls who find a job and catch up to similar outcome levels as program participants. Overall, our results suggest that JCSs can be an efficient labor market policy instrument to improve the quality of life of the long-term unemployed

Job creation schemes in turbulent times

This paper analyzes the impact of job creation schemes (JCSs) on job search outcomes in the context of the turbulent East German labor market in the aftermath of the German reunification. High job destruction characterized the economic environment. JCSs were heavily used in order to cushion this development. Using data from 1990-1999 and building upon the timing-of-events approach, we estimate multivariate discrete time duration models taking selection based on both observed and unobserved heterogeneity into account. Our results indicate that participation in JCSs increases the unemployment duration mainly due to locking-in effects. However, twelve months after the program start the significantly negative impact on the job finding probability vanishes. We find evidence for effect heterogeneity. Our results suggest that female and highly skilled participants leave unemployment quicker than other groups, which results in highly skilled women benefiting from participation. However, we find no significant impact on post-unemployment employment stability. Our results are robust to allowing for random treatment effects. Also taking into account endogenous participation in training programs, endogenous censoring, or multiple treatment effects do not change the results

Frutos de rambután (Nephelium lappaceum L.) no son hospederos de moscas de la fruta: Anastrepha spp. y Ceratitis capitata (Wied.) – resultados de 10 años en el Soconusco, Chiapas, México

El rambután todav´ıa es un cultivo exótico para los países latinoamericanos. A México fue introducido desde hace 40 años, con gran expectativa para el futuro, sin embargo el área comercial todavía es mínima, debido a un desconocimiento del cultivo, por parte de investigadores y productores, y por falta de promociones profesionales en cuanto al cultivo, manejo de poscosecha y comercialización de este cultivo. Un obstáculo importante fueron las restricciones en cuanto a contar durante d´ecadas este cultivo como planta hospedera para Ceratitis capitata y el complejo de moscas de la fruta Anastrepha spp. En estudios minuciosos y a largo plazo algunos fruticultores trataron a entregar el comprobante científico que el fruto del rambután nunca es infestado por estas plagas. Desde 1993 hasta 2002 fueron realizados estudios de muestreo de frutos y de trampeo en plantaciones frutícolas con rambután. Los resultados demuestran de manera significativa que se puede encontrar moscas mediterráneas y del complejo Anastrepha spp. en las plantaciones sin embargo no se ha reportado ningún caso de un fruto de rambután infestado con larvas de estas moscas. Por esto fue posible lograr en septiembre de 2003 la cancelación de la ley que prohibió la exportación de frutas de rambután a Japón y a las EE.UU

The Thermal Conductivity: An Alternative Method for the Measurement of Soil Compaction

Four treatments of tillage were compared by measuring soil thermal conductivity. Bulk density and difference between treatments pointed to the discriminatory capacity of the method. The soil thermal conductivity measure or Electrothermal Method (EM) has demonstrated to be a new and reliable indicator for the compaction state of soil

The Role of Bio-productivity on Bio-energy Yields

The principal photosynthetic pathways convert solar energy differently depending on the environmental conditions and the plant morphotype. Partitioning of energy storage within crops will vary according to environmental and seasonal conditions as well. Highest energy concentration is found in terpens like latex and, to a lesser extent, in lipids. Ideally, we want plant ingredients with high energy content easily amenable to ready-to-use bio-fuel. Generally, these crops are adapted to drier areas and tend to save on eco-volume space. Competition with food crops could be avoided by fetching energy from cheap agricultural by-products or waste products such as bagasse in the sugar cane. This would in fact mean that reducing power of agricultural residues should be extracted from the biomass through non-photosynthetic processes like animal ingestion or industrial bio-fermentation. Conversion and transformation efficiencies in the production chain are illustrated for some relevant crops in the light of the maximum power theorem

Essays on unemployment, job search behavior and policy interventions

This dissertation explores through which channels unemployment leads to exclusion from society and how policy interventions and technological innovations affect individual job search behavior and are able to bring unemployed persons back into the labor market. All four chapters contained in this dissertation are based on large individual-level data sets from Germany and aim at identifying causal relationships by employing different empirical methods. This thesis starts in the first chapter with an analysis of how job loss impacts different dimensions of social exclusion and shows that unemployment has detrimental economic and social effects. In the second chapter, which is co-authored by Annette Bergemann and Arne Uhlendorff, we study employment effects of participation in job creation schemes in the years after German reunification. We find that participation in job creation programs is beneficial for high skilled women in times of economic instability. In the third chapter, my co-authors Maximilian Blömer, Nicole Gürtzgen, Holger Stichnoth, Gerard van den Berg and I estimate an equilibrium job search model and simulate the introduction of different minimum wage levels. The results indicate that minimum wage effects on unemployment are non-linear and highly dependent on the labor market structure. In the last chapter, which is co-authored by Nicole Gürtzgen, André Nolte and Gerard van den Berg, we find that high-speed internet leads to higher reemployment probabilities with a certain time delay. This effect is particularly pronounced for unemployed males

Agronomic, economic and ecological aspects of the papaya (Carica papaya) production in Tabasco, Mexico

The cultivation of papaya is important in the tropic because it provides source of income to the farmer within a short time. Statistical data were obtained from farmers located in the Chontalpa, Rios and Centro-Sierra regions; the size of the survey was 67 farmers. The study shows the results of the farmers’ problem in a drastic reduction of their productivity because of the virosis and low prices in commercialization. The farmers were classified into three levels of technology, “low”, “middle” and “high”. The first one covers 88% of the farmers in seasonal conditions in contrast with the high technology that concentrates 4.5% in irrigation conditions. According to the technology used, the fertilizer shows more yields. Economically, the high technology had an internal tax return of 0.43 in comparison with the low technology of 0.25, which means that the investment is recovered with different yields. However, the use of high technology makes the system more competitive. Key words

Die Computertomographie zur Detektion von Infektfoci bei hospitalisierten Patient:innen mit Sepsis: Status quo der klinischen Versorgung und Ansätze zur Optimierung

In dieser Arbeit wurde die Rolle der Computertomographie (CT) zur Detektion von Infektquellen bei Patient:innen mit Sepsis untersucht. Die vorliegende Arbeit charakterisiert zunächst den aktuellen Stand der Diagnostik septischer Patient:innen mittels CT-Bildgebung. Die CT wird auf Basis der durchgeführten Untersuchungen als relevantes diagnostisches Verfahren zur Infektfokussuche bestätigt, das bspw. durch die Mikrobiologie komplementiert wird. Für unterschiedliche Settings wie die Rettungsstelle, die Normalstation und die Intensivstation konnte die wenige verfügbare Literatur ergänzt werden um Informationen zur Häufigkeitsverteilung bildgebend detektierter Infektfoci. Weiterhin konnte ermittelt werden, dass eine klinische und/oder auf Basis von Laborwerten generierte Einschätzung in allen untersuchten Settings nicht hinreichend prädiktiv für das Auftreten eines im CT detektierbaren Infektfokus ist. Es wurde festgestellt, dass sich in Abhängigkeit von der CT-Befundsicherheit vorhersagen lässt, ob die im CT registrierten Infektfoci den finale Foci, d.h. den im Arztbrief angegebenen Entlassdiagnosen, entsprechen. In einem relevanten Anteil der Patient:innen mit nachgewiesenem Infektfokus wurden zudem therapeutische Konsequenzen identifiziert, die sich auf die Diagnostik zurückführen ließen. In den Studien wurden die Morbidität und die Mortalität von Patient:innen mit Sepsis unter Berücksichtigung der CT-Bildgebung ausführlich untersucht und assoziierte Faktoren beschrieben. Um prognostisch relevante bildgebende Faktoren zu charakterisieren, untersuchten wir außerdem cerebrovaskuläre Ereignisse, die bei Patient:innen mit Sepsis gehäuft auftreten. Dabei konnten wir erstmalig die Prävalenz cerebrovaskulärer Ereignisse bei Sepsis beschreiben und die Relevanz für das Patient:innen-Outcome analysieren. Ein weiterer wichtiger Schritt in der vorliegenden Arbeit war die Untersuchung der Qualität der bildgebenden Diagnostik von Patient:innen der Intensivstation. Hierbei konnte der Nutzen des interdisziplinären Austauschs in MDCs mit strukturiertem Feedback gezeigt werden. So stellten wir eine Reduktion des Auftretens von QM-Ereignissen fest nach Einführung eines neuen, regelmäßigen und strukturierten Konferenzformats

Unemployment and social exclusion

This paper analyzes the economic and social consequences of job loss which contribute to exclusion from society based on German linked survey and administrative data. To study the causal relationship between unemployment and multiple dimensions of social marginalization, I combine inverse propensity score weighting with a difference-in-differences approach. The results suggest that job loss has particularly detrimental effects on the subjective perception of social integration, life satisfaction, the access to economic resources and mental health. Moreover, this paper shows that becoming unemployed hinders the fulfillment of psychosocial needs that are typically associated with working, such as social status and higher self-efficacy. The effects of job loss are long-lasting, growing more profound the longer the duration of unemployment and persisting following reemployment. Looking at effect heterogeneity, I find that having a partner and being highly educated reduces the negative effects of job loss