What do we mean by a ‘small farm’?

The holding of a seminar on the future for ‘small farms’ requires us to consider what is meant by a ‘small farm’. This is not as straightforward as might be imagined. It presupposes an unambiguous definition of what constitutes ‘a farm’ and a means of distinguishing those farms which are considered to be ‘small’ from the remainder of other farms, that is larger farms. This in turn presupposes an accepted measure of farm size (or amalgam of such measures) and adoption of an agreed size threshold below which farms might be described as ‘small’. However the choices in respect of measure of farm size and threshold for a farm being considered as ‘small’ may depend, respectively, on the particular policy context (for example, contribution to output or employment or land use) and the size distribution of farms within the country(ies) in question. In particular, and analogous with the definition of poverty, there is a choice to be made as to whether farm size is to be assessed in absolute or relative terms. If the former, virtually all farms in some countries may be considered to be small; if the latter, the existence of a ‘small farm’ sector will inevitably continue.Farm, Agricultural holding, Farm size, Small farms, Part-time farming, Consumer/Household Economics, Land Economics/Use,

Aspects of the Definition and Classification of Farms

This paper examines what, precisely, is meant by a 'farm' and considers various attributes of farms relevant to an assessment of the structure of European agriculture. A measure of average farm size is proposed to cope with the uncertain count of the population of farms. The issue of tenure may also be complex, with some farms consisting of separate parcels of land, each with different tenure situations. Finally, although many European farmers are often described as being 'part-time', there are a number of different criteria on the basis of which farmers, and also farms, may be classified as being part-time.Farm, Agricultural holding, Farm Size, Agricultural landownership, Part-time farming, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use,

The measurement of farm size and the meaning of part-time farming: the AARES countries

This paper examines what, precisely, is meant by a 'farm', the criteria for the inclusion of individual farms in a statistical register and the resulting enumerations and average sizes of farms in published statistics. Alternative measures of farm size are examined and a relatively novel measure of average farm size proposed to cope with the possibly uncertain population of farms. This is illustrated with reference to data relating to the AARES countries and to the UK. Finally the meaning of the expression 'part-time' as applied to farmers or farms is examined, with a call for great clarity in its use.Farm, Agricultural holding, Farm size, Averages, Part-time farming, Industrial Organization,

A new method to detect solar-like oscillations at very low S/N using statistical significance testing

We introduce a new method to detect solar-like oscillations in frequency power spectra of stellar observations, under conditions of very low signal to noise. The Moving-Windowed-Power-Search, or MWPS, searches the power spectrum for signatures of excess power, over and above slowly varying (in frequency) background contributions from stellar granulation and shot or instrumental noise. We adopt a false-alarm approach (Chaplin et al. 2011) to ascertain whether flagged excess power, which is consistent with the excess expected from solar-like oscillations, is hard to explain by chance alone (and hence a candidate detection). We apply the method to solar photometry data, whose quality was systematically degraded to test the performance of the MWPS at low signal-to-noise ratios. We also compare the performance of the MWPS against the frequently applied power-spectrum-of-power-spectrum (PSxPS) detection method. The MWPS is found to outperform the PSxPS method.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS, Added reference

Ballerina - Pirouettes in Search of Gamma Bursts

The cosmological origin of gamma ray bursts has now been established with reasonable certainty. Many more bursts will need to be studied to establish the typical distance scale, and to map out the large diversity in properties which have been indicated by the first handful of events. We are proposing Ballerina, a small satellite to provide accurate positions and new data on the gamma-ray bursts. We anticipate a detection rate an order of magnitude larger than obtained from Beppo-SAX.Comment: A&AS in press, proceedings of the Workshop "Gamma Ray Bursts in the Afterglow Era" in Rome, November 199

Halflife of 56Ni in cosmic rays

A measurement of the 56Ni cosmic ray abundance has been discussed as a possible tool to determine the acceleration time scale of relativistic particles in cosmic rays. This conjecture will depend on the halflife of totally ionized 56Ni which can only decay by higher-order forbidden transitions. We have calculated this halflife within large-scale shell model calculations and find t_{1/2} \approx 4 \times 10^4 years, only slightly larger than the currently available experimental lower limit, but too short for 56Ni to serve as a cosmic ray chronometer.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figur