Organic Agriculture in Australia - Research Levies and Expenditure

It is often claimed that the organic industry in Australia receives insufficient funding for research and development. Behind this claim lies the assumption that funding provided is less than the amount paid by organic farmers in obligatory research and development levies. But is this the case? How much do organic farmers contribute? And how much do they receive in return? The aim of this report is to quantify these issues. The first issue - levies paid by organic farmers - was scrutinised and analysed with the help of the organic certification offices. These offices hold data pertaining to organic farms. The majority of farms, including those under organic management, pay levies for research and development (R&D), marketing, the National Residue Survey and animal health. This is either a certain percentage of the farm gate value of the product (for example, grains), or a set amount per unit of production (for example, per animal or per tonne of apples). Calculations of the total R&D levies paid for organic produce, sold both as organic and in the conventional market, amounted to 392,100 in 2000-2001. Matching Commonwealth government funding effectively raised the organic R&D contribution to 656,200. Organic farmers paid an additional $240,000 in marketing levies, and$104,300 for the National Residue Survey and animal health levy. The second issue – how much of the research levies is returned into research beneficial to organic farmers – was examined in less detail. However, some estimates were obtained. Direct expenditure on R&D on organic agriculture was around $450,000, the bulk of which came via contributions from the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC), with a substantial contribution from the GRDC. Some funding was provided by Horticulture Australia Ltd (HAL). More indirect payments were generously calculated to amount to another$50,000, from funding from HAL and the Dairy Research and Development Corporation (DRDC), with possibly more contributions in the grain,meat and wool industries. The conclusion is therefore that the total amount spent on R&D into organic agriculture in Australia falls well short of the $656,200, the amount collected from organic farmers and matched with Australian Commonwealth contributions

Organic agricultural production in Australia: 2010-11 and 2015-16

In 2010-11 the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) included organic agriculture in its census, which was repeated in 2015-16. In this paper the progress of the Australian organic production between those two years is tracked. In 2015-16 the farm gate value of organic production in Australia was estimated at well over $1.1 billion, almost three times the value estimated five years earlier, in 2010-11. By far the largest contributor to the growth in that period was beef – with an almost six-fold increase in returns since 2010-11 – due mainly to the enormous growth in organic grazing areas (covering over 90 per cent of the area under organic agriculture in 2015-16), but also partly to an increase in beef prices in the conventional market and in premiums. However,the Australian organic sector is more than extensive grazing. There is also a more intensive agriculture with broad-acre and horticultural crops, where livestock is kept in a more intensively managed way

Organic beef production and marketing in Australia

Although organic beef marketing has long lagged behind that of organic products of plant origin, it has grown considerably since the late 1990s, when the large retailers entered the market. Whereas in 2000-2001 the value of the Australian certified organic beef was only $32 million (farm-gate prices), with less than two thirds going to the organic market, by 2005 the estimated production had doubled to around$60 million (farm-gate prices), with virtually all of the produce being sold in the organic market. About three quarters of this is currently sold through the domestic market. Dominant export markets have moved from Japan and the UK to the USA

Unsupervised Learning of Artistic Styles with Archetypal Style Analysis

In this paper, we introduce an unsupervised learning approach to automatically discover, summarize, and manipulate artistic styles from large collections of paintings. Our method is based on archetypal analysis, which is an unsupervised learning technique akin to sparse coding with a geometric interpretation. When applied to deep image representations from a collection of artworks, it learns a dictionary of archetypal styles, which can be easily visualized. After training the model, the style of a new image, which is characterized by local statistics of deep visual features, is approximated by a sparse convex combination of archetypes. This enables us to interpret which archetypal styles are present in the input image, and in which proportion. Finally, our approach allows us to manipulate the coefficients of the latent archetypal decomposition, and achieve various special effects such as style enhancement, transfer, and interpolation between multiple archetypes.Comment: Accepted at NIPS 2018, Montr\'eal, Canad

Improving the measurement of the value of organic production in Australia

In Australia reliable data has always been a problem, as no agency (government or otherwise) has regularly and systematically collected and published full sets of data. In 2012 the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) published data resulting from questions on organic agriculture included in its census of 2010-11. These data were analysed, and are reported in the bi-annual marketing reports of Australian Organic. However, the analysis of those ABS data has serious shortcomings. Estimates of the farm-gate value of organic production are likely to be significantly distorted because of serious methodological problems. The main problems relate to: (i) avoidance of organic price premium; (ii) discrepancy between share of organic area and share of the value of organic production; and (iii) confusion between production versus sales data. The conclusion is that the analysis of those ABS data is not likely to provide an accurate picture of organic farm-gate values. In the course of researching this issue it also became clear that, even if proper analysis of the ABS data could have led to a good estimate of organic agriculture in Australia, inconsistency in the analysis of 2010-11 data, and also of 2014 data makes accuracy in the Australian Organic Market Reports for 2012 and 2014 dubious, to say the least

Levies and organic agricultural in Australia: 2010-11 and 2015-16

In 2015-16, organic farmers in Australia paid an estimated A$3.7 million in levies for their product, of which A$2 million was levied for the purposes of R&D. This means that, with government’s matching contributions approximately doubling this amount for R&D purposes, the organic industry could have A$4 million available for R&D purposes in the organic industry – and more if more industries were to be included

The European Market for Organic Products: Growth and Development

The European Market for organic food has been growing rapidly in terms of both supply and demand during the 1990s. However, national markets develop in many different directions. In some countries the market share ist quiet high while in others a market for organic farming products nearly does not exist. This book detects and compares the national markets of the main organic products in 18 European countries - the 15 EU countries plus Switzerland, Norway and the Czech Republic - on the basis of the most comprehensive collection of data ever presented covering the period 1993 - 1997/1998. It is shown that European demand is far from being satisfied and the major efforts in organising a transparent international market and developing marketing strategies is necessary to realise this potential. This book is aimed at policy makers, the private sector, researchers and students in the field of economics and politics of organic farming

Three neutrons from Lattice QCD

We present a study on ab-initio calculations of three-neutron correlators from Lattice QCD. We extend the method of baryon blocks to systems of three spacially displaced baryons. This allows the measurement of three-neutron $p$-wave correlators with total spin $S=1/2$ and $3/2$. In addition, we use automatic code generation that has high flexibility and allows for easy inclusion of additional channels in the future while optimizing the evaluation of contractions. Our measurements were performed on a newly generated $96\times 48^3$ Clover-Wilson gauge field ensemble with $m_{\pi} \approx 370\,\text{MeV}$. We present preliminary results of our calculations of one pion and nucleon as well as two nucleon ($2N$) and three neutron ($3n$) correlators.Comment: Proceedings from Lattice2018, 7 pages, 4 figure

Between Aims and Execution: Value Trade-Offs in the Practical Implementation of the European Arrest Warrant?

The European Union (EU) increasingly develops and implements policies infused with salient and sometimes conflicting values – for instance, in migration and criminal law cooperation. However, policy implementation studies have not frequently considered how such complex value trade-offs may affect practical implementation within Member States. This article therefore quantitatively and temporally examines the practical implementation of an EU flagship criminal law measure: the simplified extradition system known as the European Arrest Warrant (EAW). Using data on EAWs decided upon by the Dutch Amsterdam District Court, we test the impact of value trade-offs by examining whether (newly introduced) safeguards for the protection of requested persons adversely affect system efficiency (measured through case turnover times). The results suggest that the design of legal tests and adjustments made to the EAW system over time through the Court of Justice of the European Union affect the balance between fundamental rights protection and efficiency in the practical implementation of the EAW