Exploring futures of food and farming systems: the Agrimonde scenarios

This brief series was developed in preparation for the Foresight Breakout Session of the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD 2012) and the Global Foresight Hub1. The briefs were written to communicate to a wider audience, such as policy makers, civil society organizations, researchers, and funders. The briefs were classified into three categories: Future Studies, Regional Update, and Visioning. http://www.fao.org/docs/eims/upload/305838/Brief%2016.pd

The food system in the wider bioeconomy: the BioSAM perspective : an economic impact analysis for EU Member States

The Bioeconomy emerges as an opportunity towards more economic, social and environmental sustainability, becoming a priority for many countries, including the European Union and its Member States. According to the definition in the European Union strategy, the Bioeconomy includes all sectors of the economy that are based on the use of renewable biological resources to produce value added products such as food, feed, energy, and bio-based products (European Commission, 2012). Due to the importance of promoting the Bioeconomy, it is necessary to analyse the impact of the sectors directly involved. However, the lack of available data is one of the main obstacles for monitoring its progress. As a response to this problem, the Bioeconomy Social Accounting Matrix (BioSAM) database has been developed for the EU Member States (Mainar-Causapé 2021). The purpose of this report is to present an overview of the European Union bio-based products and industries. Our focus is mainly on the analysis of the impacts of final demand variation on value added and employment by sectoral level disaggregation. By using the BioSAM database it is possible to deepen the impact analysis by considering a detailed disaggregation of bio-based products. A country cluster analysis focusing on food system sectors is also introduced. In addition, the results are presented in a dashboard to allow the replication and comparison of different impacts by sector and country.Publishe

Agile in the Era of Digitalization : A Finnish Survey Study

This paper was a Candidate for the Best Full Paper.Peer reviewe

Comparative Susceptibility of Sheep of Different Origins, Breeds and PRNP Genotypes to Challenge with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy and Scrapie

Sheep are natural hosts of the prion disease, scrapie. They are also susceptible to experimental challenge with various scrapie strains and with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), which affects cattle and has been accidentally transmitted to a range of other species, including man. Incidence and incubation period of clinical disease in sheep following inoculation is controlled by the PRNP gene, which has different alleles defined on the basis of polymorphisms, particularly at codons 136, 154 and 171, although other codons are associated with survival time, and the exact responses of the sheep may be influenced by other breed-related differences. Here we report the results of a long term single study of experimental scrapie and BSE susceptibility of sheep of Cheviot, Poll Dorset and Suffolk breeds, originating from New Zealand and of a wide range of susceptible and resistant PRNP genotypes. Responses were compared with those of sheep from a closed Cheviot flock of UK origin (Roslin Cheviot flock). The unusually long observation period (6-8 years for most, but up to 12 years for others) allows us to draw robust conclusions about rates of survival of animals previously regarded as resistant to infection, particularly PRNP heterozygotes, and is the most comprehensive such study reported to date. BSE inoculation by an intracerebral route produced disease in all genotype groups with differing incubation periods, although M112T and L141F polymorphisms seemed to give some protection. Scrapie isolate SSBP/1, which has the shortest incubation period in sheep with at least one VRQ PRNP allele, also produced disease following sub-cutaneous inoculation in ARQ/ARQ animals of New Zealand origin, but ARQ/ARQ sheep from the Roslin flock survived the challenge. Our results demonstrate that the links between PRNP genotype and clinical prion disease in sheep are much less secure than previously thought, and may break down when, for example, a different breed of sheep is moved into a new flock

Enzymes immobilized in Langmuir-Blodgett films: Why determining the surface properties in Langmuir monolayer is important?

ABSTRACT In this review we discuss about the immobilization of enzymes in Langmuir-Blodgett films in order to determine the catalytic properties of these biomacromolecules when adsorbed on solid supports. Usually, the conformation of enzymes depends on the environmental conditions imposed to them, including the chemical composition of the matrix, and the morphology and thickness of the film. In this review, we show an outline of manuscripts that report the immobilization of enzymes as LB films since the 1980’s, and also some examples of how the surface properties of the floating monolayer prepared previously to the transfer to the solid support are important to determine the efficiency of the resulting device

Agricultures et alimentations du monde en 2050 : scénarios et défis pour un développement durable

National audienc

Estimating value added and employment of bioeconomy in EU regions : A methodological proposal

The analysis and monitoring of the bioeconomy at the regional level is of interest for policy design and evaluation, and it aligns with the territorial approach called for by the Bioeconomy Strategy (2018) of the European Union (EU). Although some initiatives provided estimates of the size and/or regional distribution of the bioeconomy in some countries, there are no homogeneous data allowing the analysis of the regional dimension of the EU’s bioeconomy.This report describes a methodology to estimate employment and value added of the bioeconomy sectors at the NUTS2 level in the EU. It consists of a systematic combination of Eurostat regional statistics with national bio-based shares from the public JRC-Bioeconomics database for allocating employment and value added in the bioeconomy sectors amongst regions. National bio-based shares are calculated following Ronzon et al. (2020)’s approach. When missing from Eurostat data sources, regional series are estimated by applying various criteria to regionalise national statistics. Finally, some missing data estimation algorithms are applied to complete the dataset.Preliminary results evidence that this approach manages to fill in the majority of missing series and data in the initial datasets. We extract some key figures and trends for the regional bioeconomies in the EU. We discuss our results through the comparison with available official statistics, other previous estimates and expert feedback, and propose potential improvements

Transmission and characterization of bovine spongiform encephalopathy sources in two ovine transgenic mouse lines (TgOvPrP4 and TgOvPrP59).

International audienc

Constructing an open access economy-wide database for bioeconomy impact assessment in the European Union member states

The bioeconomy encompasses the extraction, processing and transformation of renewable biological resources and waste streams, connected to activities as diverse as food, feed, energy and manufacturing. Under the auspices of the European Union’s ‘Green Deal’ strategy, this broad collective of sectors is promoted as a cornerstone for achieving sustainable growth. Progress in developing ex-ante tools of economy-wide modelling analysis to assess its performance is, however, hindered by a paucity of consistent and comprehensive data. To overcome this shortcoming, the construction steps for a new set of open access social accounting matrices (dubbed ‘BioSAMs’) is described for a detailed and comprehensive selection of traditional and contemporary bio-based accounts for each of the EU member states. To illustrate its potential, a structural analysis based on three different and complementary methods (Rasmussen-Jones, hypothetical extraction method and eigenvector) is performed to classify bio-based sector wealth generating properties and to identify high performance (‘key’) sectors