In Search of a Strategy for Making Growth More Pro-Poor in the Philippines

The main driver of poverty reduction has shifted from agricultural to non-agricultural income growth in rural Philippines in the past two decades. Agricultural growth is still relatively more important (vis-à-vis non-agricultural growth), however, in reducing rural poverty in relatively more isolated provinces. Our results suggest that agricultural investments should focus on areas with underdeveloped infrastructure but with comparative advantage in agriculture. At the same time, non-agricultural income growth can be made more pro-poor by investing in mobility infrastructure and health, facilitating international labor migration, and lowering income inequality.poverty, growth and inequality, pro-poor growth, role of agriculture, the Philippines, Asia

Guest editorial: Creating, managing and marketing gastronomy experiences in hospitality and tourism

Gastronomy experiences are increasingly becoming major drivers of tourism flows worldwide as they allow travelers to get more familiar with the local culture and traditions of the places visited. As such, gastronomy experiences have propelled gastronomic hospitality and tourism experiences which are attracting the attention of a high and expanding number of hospitality and tourism firms and fostering regional tourism development. Gastronomic tourism experiences entail the visit to food-themed events and festivals, primary and secondary producers, cooking classes, restaurants and places for which food tasting are the prevailing travel motivating factors. Research on this socio-cultural and economic phenomenon has been consolidating over more than three decades as an area of tourism research, often named interchangeably “gastronomic tourism”, “culinary tourism” and “food tourism”. The purpose of this special issue is to broaden and deepen our knowledge of gastronomy experiences in hospitality and tourism, from a managerial perspective, in a rapidly changing world

Land Rental Market Activity in Agrarian Reform Areas: Evidence from the Philippines

Using data from 3,120 farm households surveyed in 2000 and 2006, the paper tests for factors that affect the degree and extent of households' participation in the rural land rental market. The survey period coincided with the full implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) which imposes restriction on the conveyance and transfer (including rental) of all lands awarded under the program. Econometric results show that the rural land rental market is not functioning efficiently. Transaction costs in land leasing are significant resulting in high proportion of nonparticipants and incomplete adjustment toward desired cultivated area for households that participate in the market. Moreover, the poor and landless have limited access to the land rental market since participation in the market is not determined by agricultural ability but is strongly influenced by endowment of land and access to formal credit. While households with less land tend to rent-in more land, the demand for land increases for household owning land more than five hectares. On the other hand, the wealth bias of rural credit market is creating more barriers for the poor to access land. The poor has been able to participate in the rental market through share tenancy arrangements but dependence on informal credit markets constrains them to operate desired cultivated area. The twin effects of inefficient land rental market and credit market imperfections can offset labor advantages of family farms and cause farms to operate below optimal level. The need to achieve an efficient farm size is critical for rural development and should be viewed separately from land ownership. In particular, the land rental market plays a critical role in access to land by the poor and in households' adjustment to an optimal farm size. It would thus be desirable for the government to improve the regulatory framework for the land rental market to operate efficiently

Advances in human-computer interactions: methods, algorithms, and applications

Editoria

In search of a strategy for making growth more pro-poor in the Philippines

The main driver of poverty reduction has shifted from agricultural to non-agricultural income growth in rural Philippines in the past two decades. Agricultural growth is still relatively more important (vis-à-vis non-agricultural growth), however, in reducing rural poverty in relatively more isolated provinces. Our results suggest that agricultural investments should focus on areas with underdeveloped infrastructure but with comparative advantage in agriculture. At the same time, non-agricultural income growth can be made more pro-poor by investing in mobility infrastructure and health, facilitating international labor migration, and lowering income inequality

The competitive productivity (CP) of tourism destinations: an integrative conceptual framework and a reflection on big data and analytics

Purpose: The purpose of this study is twofold. First, this study elaborates an integrative conceptual framework of tourism destination competitive productivity (TDCP) by blending established destination competitiveness frameworks, the competitive productivity (CP) framework and studies pertaining to big data and big data analytics (BDA) within destination management information systems and smart tourism destinations. Second, this study examines the drivers of TDCP in the context of the ongoing 4th industrial revolution by conceptualizing the destination business intelligence unit (DBIU) as a platform able to create sustained destination business intelligence under the guise of BDA, useful to support destination managers to achieve the tourism destination’s economic objectives. Design/methodology/approach: In this work, the authors leverage both extant literature (under the guise of research on CP, tourism destination competitiveness [TDC] and destination management information systems) and empirical work (in the form of interviews and field work involving destination managers and chief executive officers of destination management organizations and convention bureaus, as well as secondary data) to elaborate, develop and present an integrative conceptual framework of TDCP. Findings: The integrative conceptual framework of TDCP elaborated has been found helpful by a number of destination managers trying to understand how to effectively and efficiently manage and market a tourism destination in today’s fast-paced, digital and hypercompetitive environment. While DBIUs are at different stages of implementation, often as part of broader smart destination initiatives, it appears that they are increasingly fulfilling the purpose of creating sustained destination business intelligence by means of BDA to help tourism destinations achieve their economic goals. Research limitations/implications: This work bears several practical implications for tourism policymakers, destination managers and marketers, technology developers, as well as tourism and hospitality firms and practitioners. Tourism policymakers could embed TDCP into tourism and economic policies, and destination managers and marketers might build and make use of platforms such as the proposed DBIU. Technology developers need to understand that designing destination management information systems in general and more specifically DBIUs requires an in-depth analysis of the stakeholders that are going to contribute, share, control and use BDA. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study constitutes the first attempt to integrate the CP, TDC and destination management information systems research streams to elaborate an integrative conceptual framework of TDCP. Second, the authors contribute to the Industry 4.0 research stream by examining the drivers of tourism destination CP in the context of the ongoing 4th industrial revolution. Third, the authors contribute to the destination management information systems research stream by introducing and conceptualizing the DBIU and the related sustained destination business intelligence

Functionality of low digestibility emulsions in cocoa creams : structural changes during in vitro digestion and sensory perception

The objective of this work was to evaluate the application of low digestibility oil/water emulsions as fat source in a cocoa cream. Emulsions were composed by water, sunflower oil and cellulose ethers or xanthan gum. Back extrusion assays were measured before and after in vitro digestion and free fatty acids release were measured to evaluate the fat digestibility. Finally consumer acceptability was carried out to determine the degree of liking of each system. The results revealed that all the emulsions confer a suitable consistency to the creams and the structure provided by the hydrocolloids was resistant to digestion, reducing the fat digestibility. However, after gastric digestion only cream with xanthan gum showed a significant increase in consistency what it could be related with an increase in satiety. Regarding the sensory characteristics, the cream elaborated with xanthan gum was rated close to the control cream that received the highest scores

SEMI-AUTOMATED PRODUCTION AND FILTERING OF SATELLITE DERIVED WATER QUALITY PARAMETERS

This paper describes the semi-automated procedure implemented for the production of Water Quality Parameters (WQP) maps obtained processing Sentinel-3 and Landsat-8 imagery in the framework of SIMILE Interreg project. The processing chain includes the use of the C2RCC processor to obtain Chl-a (Chlorophyll-a) and TSM (Total Suspended Matter) and the Barsi method to produce maps of water surface temperature. The maps were filtered to exclude anomalous values due for example to clouds, water reflection (such as glint), or mixed pixels and compared to in-situ data. The filtering included an outlier rejection performed with the 36 rule. The values singled out as local anomalies where checked with respect to possible local behaviours, such as the presence of very small gulfs and inflow/outflow streams and providing guidelines with visual examples, to support the operator. The idea of a procedure as much as possible automated and guided is to foster the WQP maps production after the end of SIMILE project

Resenha de: Nova História e Novo Mundo

     MAURO (Frédéric) . — Nova História e Nôvo Mundo. Editôra da Universidade de São Paulo — Editôra Perspectiva São Paulo. Coleção Debates, volume 13, São Paulo, 1969.