Niche and Direct Marketing in the Rural-Urban Fringe: Study of the Agricultural Economy in the Shadow of a Large City

Farmers in the rural-urban fringe (RUF) face unique challenges. Spillovers from the urban region and competition for land increase the costs of farming relative to farming farther removed. Yet, there is greater potential for off-farm employment and niche marketing of farm products, providing more income options to RUF farmers. In this research, we employ a survey of direct- and niche-marketing farmers located in the RUF of Vancouver, Canada to examine how the rural-urban interface affects farms, particularly their long-term survivability and sustainability. From a list of 102 direct marketing and organic farmers, we managed to elicit twenty-nine completed surveys. Annual gross farm receipts averaged almost $500,000, similar to the census average for all farms in the region. Incomes varied significantly among respondents and farmers produced a wide range of products, and yet exhibiting a willingness to invest in their farms. Respondents had been farming for an average over twenty years and are highly educated. Compared with farmers near Victoria, on Vancouver Island, producers who use direct marketing or organic methods in the Vancouver RUF have higher gross farm incomes, rely less on off-farm income and are much more likely to carry farm debt. Direct marketing also contributes to total farm sales, with only 19.5% of product value marketed at the farm-gate, at farmers’ markets or through delivery programs, compared to 57.3% of farms near Victoria. Wholesalers, distributors and processors play a larger role on the mainland, likely because the amount of farm product available makes operation of such facilities economically feasible.Direct marketing, organic farming, niche marketing, agritourism, local agriculture, farm survival

Clinicians in the classroom: the bereavement midwife

The aim of pre-registration midwifery education is to prepare the student for the demanding and complex role they aspire to, using a range of teaching, learning and assessment strategies both in theory and practice. This article is part of a series exploring the role of clinicians as facilitators of learning in the classroom environment. This article explores the role of the bereavement midwife and discusses a teaching session conducted by bereavement midwife Tracy Rea with second-year students on the 3-year pre-registration midwifery programme. The session included input from a couple who shared their experiences of the loss of their son and their subsequent pregnancy. The article concludes with student feedback on the session, demonstrating the deep and meaningful learning that took place and confirming the value of bringing the realities of practice into the classroom environment

Hobby Farms and British Columbia’s Agricultural Land Reserve

Agricultural land protection near the urban-rural fringe is a goal of many jurisdictions, including British Columbia, Canada, which uses a provincial-wide zoning scheme to prevent subdivisions and non-agricultural uses of the land. Preferential taxes are also used to encourage agricultural use of the land. Small scale hobby farmers are present at the urban fringe near Victoria (the capital), both inside and outside of the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR). The goal of this paper is to investigate whether hobby farms create problems for agricultural land preservation. We make use of a GIS (geographic information system) model to construct detailed spatial variables and analyse our parcel-level data set using an hedonic pricing model and a limited dependent variable model. The results show that hobby farmers tend to select small parcels that are near open space and relatively close to the city and they tend to support horses and other livestock. In terms of price, farmland is worth more per ha the smaller the parcel is and the closer it is to the city. In general farmland is worth more when it is less fragmented but this appears to be reversed for hobby farms – indicating that hobby farmers may be better adapted to surviving in the urban fringe than conventional farmers. The conclusions drawn from the results in this paper would likely apply to other jurisdictions which seek to protect agricultural land in the urban fringe.Hobby farmers, Agricultural Land Reserve, Geographical Information System, urban-rural fringe, zoning systems, farmland fragmentation

The role of knowledge capturing during the elicitation of system requirements in a high-reliability organisation in South Africa

The most important strategic asset in an organisation is the knowledge its employees possesses. As a result, organisations are looking at various methods to retain and understand this knowledge in order to use as competitive advantage. Requirements elicitation is the process where problems that need to be solved, are uncovered. The information that is gathered needs to be analysed, interpreted, modelled and validated before it can be utilised for Information Systems (IS) development. The development of an IS requires access to knowledge, whether the knowledge comes in an explicit or tacit form. Explicit knowledge is knowledge that can be expressed in words or numbers and can be easily articulated. Tacit knowledge is rooted in an individual’s experience and has a personal quality; it is more difficult to articulate and communicate. The extraction of explicit knowledge can be made available with great ease, but there is some degree of tacit knowledge that cannot be encapsulated unequivocally and requires intervention to capture and apply knowledge. The implementation of an IS follows a System Development Life-cycle (SDLC) approach. One of the critical activities in this process is the elicitation of requirements from stakeholders in this interactive process. Elicitation of requirements includes gathering information from users, validating and capturing the information to develop a requirements specification that will be used to develop an IS. The purpose of this interpretive case study was to understand how knowledge can be captured effectively during requirements elicitation in the context of a high-reliability organisation (HRO). An HRO is an organisation that can perform optimally without accidents and have low safety rates over time. An analysis of requirements elicitation in the literature was produced and an online questionnaire was distributed to employees at a HRO in South Africa in order to collect data. Upon analysis of the findings, it was established that employees of this HRO has long tenure at the organisation and is willing to share knowledge. It was also observed that the standard system requirement process does not cater for knowledge capturing as employees at this HRO environment often act based on their own experiences and tacit knowledge rather than explicit knowledge. There is a need to improve on the requirements elicitation process by providing an opportunity for the capturing of this knowledge in the requirements. The document produced after the requirements elicitation, is the software requirements specification document and a recommendation is made that this artefact should cater for the capturing of knowledge.Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2017.InformaticsMComUnrestricte

Case report of homozygous E200D mutation of PRNP in apparently sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease

Background: Inherited prion diseases are rare autosomal dominant disorders associated with diverse clinical presentations. All are associated with mutation of the gene that encodes prion protein (PRNP). Homozygous mutations with atypical clinical phenotypes have been described but are extremely rare. Case presentation: A Chinese patient presented with a rapidly progressive cognitive and motor disorder in the clinical spectrum of sCJD. Investigations strongly suggested a diagnosis of CJD. He was found to carry a homozygous mutation at PRNP codon 200 (E200D), but there was no known family history of the disorder. The estimated allele frequency of E200D in East Asian populations is incompatible with it being a highly penetrant mutation in the heterozygous state. Conclusion: In our view the homozygous PRNP E200D genotype is likely to be causal of CJD in this patient. Homotypic PrP interactions are well known to favour the development of prion disease. The case is compatible with recessively inherited prion disease

Should we scale-up? A mixed methods process evaluation of an intervention targeting sedentary office workers using the RE-AIM QuEST framework

Background: Interventions targeting a reduction in sedentary behaviour in office workers need to be scaled-up to have impact. In this study, the RE-AIM QuEST framework was used to evaluate the potential for further implementation and scale-up of a consultation based workplace intervention which targeted both the reduction, and breaking up of sitting time.  Methods: To evaluate the Springfield College sedentary behaviour intervention across multiple RE-AIM QuEST indicators; intervention participant, non-participant (employees who did not participate) and key informant (consultation delivery team; members of the research team and stakeholders in workplace health promotion) data were collected using interviews, focus groups and questionnaires. Questionnaires were summarized using descriptive statistics and interviews and focus groups were transcribed verbatim, and thematically analysed.  Results: Barriers to scale-up were: participant burden of activity monitoring; lack of management support; influence of policy; flexibility (scheduling/locations); time and cost. Facilitators to scale up were: visible leadership; social and cultural changes in the workplace; high acceptability; existing health and wellbeing programmes; culture and philosophy of the participating college.  Conclusion: There is potential for scale-up, however adaptations will need to be made to address the barriers to scale-up. Future interventions in office workers should evaluate for scalability during the pilot phases of research

Urban Resilience Thinking for Municipalities

This document was prepared as a contribution to the Department of Science and Technology’s (DST’s) Grand Challenge on Global Change and as a complement to flagship initiatives such as the South African Risk and Vulnerability Atlas project (Archer, et al., 2010). The Global Change Grand Challenge is aimed at “supporting knowledge generation and technological innovation that will enable South Africa, Africa, and the world, to respond to global environmental change, including climate change” (Archer, et al., 2010, p. ii). While the Grand Challenge highlights the importance of science in supporting South Africa’s response to global change, it extends beyond a purely biophysical focus to acknowledge the importance of the social sciences. There is a clear understanding that the most compelling responses to global change will come through the combined efforts of the natural and social sciences. The DST therefore supports a number of research programmes across South Africa that draw on a wide range of scientific and academic fields in responding to specific challenges of global change across rural and urban –South Africa. One of the key thematic areas supported through the Grand Challenge is “urban resilience”. This is not at the expense of work on rural areas, as there are also a number of research programmes targeting rural South Africa, but it is recognition of both the threats posed by poorly managed urban areas and of the opportunities that towns and cities offer for greater resilience and sustainability.Global Change and Sustainability Research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, the Department of Science and Technology, and the National Research Foundation, South Afric

Doctors' and nurses' views and experience of transferring patients from critical care home to die: a qualitative exploratory study.

BACKGROUND: Dying patients would prefer to die at home, and therefore a goal of end-of-life care is to offer choice regarding where patients die. However, whether it is feasible to offer this option to patients within critical care units and whether teams are willing to consider this option has gained limited exploration internationally. AIM: To examine current experiences of, practices in and views towards transferring patients in critical care settings home to die. DESIGN: Exploratory two-stage qualitative study SETTING/PARTICIPANTS: Six focus groups were held with doctors and nurses from four intensive care units across two large hospital sites in England, general practitioners and community nurses from one community service in the south of England and members of a Patient and Public Forum. A further 15 nurses and 6 consultants from critical care units across the United Kingdom participated in follow-on telephone interviews. FINDINGS: The practice of transferring critically ill patients home to die is a rare event in the United Kingdom, despite the positive view of health care professionals. Challenges to service provision include patient care needs, uncertain time to death and the view that transfer to community services is a complex, highly time-dependent undertaking. CONCLUSION: There are evidenced individual and policy drivers promoting high-quality care for all adults approaching the end of life encompassing preferred place of death. While there is evidence of this choice being honoured and delivered for some of the critical care population, it remains debatable whether this will become a conventional practice in end of life in this setting

An Ounce of Prevention: How Are We Managing the Early Assessment of Residents\u27 Clinical Skills?: A CERA Study

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Clinical skills deficits in residents are common but when identified early can result in decreased cost, faculty time, and stress related to remediation. There is currently no accepted best practice for early assessment of incoming residents\u27 clinical skills. This study describes the current state of early PGY-1 clinical skills assessment in US family medicine residencies. METHODS: Eleven questions were embedded in the nationwide CERA survey to US family medicine residency directors regarding the processes, components, and barriers to early PGY-1 assessment. Responses are described, and bivariate analyses of the relationship between assessment variables and percentage of international medical graduates (IMGs), type of program, and barriers to implementation were performed using chi square testing. RESULTS: Almost four of five (78.4%) responding programs conduct formal early assessments to establish baseline clinical skills (89.6%), provide PGY-1 residents with a guide to focus their learning goals (71.6%), and less often, in response to resident performance problems (34.3%). Barriers to implementing PGY-1 early assessment programs include cost of faculty time (56.3%), cost of tools (42.1%), and time for the assessment during the PGY-1 resident\u27s schedule (41.0%). Cost of faculty time and time for assessment from the PGY-1 resident\u27s schedule were statistically significant major/insurmountable barriers for community-based, non-university-affiliated programs. CONCLUSIONS: Early PGY-1 assessments with locally developed tools for direct observation are commonly used in family medicine residency programs. Assessment program development should be targeted toward using existing, validated tools during the PGY-1 resident\u27s patient care schedule