Toward an Organizational Theory of Membership Structural Design

Various events have led to the development of highly complex cooperative operations and to concepts for understanding operations. However. development of membership structures and concepts for understanding these structures has lagged. This paper imports organizational design and contingency theory into the member control literature. Membership structure is understood as organization-like, producing a service (Le., member control). Member control structure is understood as having three aspects (representation, policy making, and oversight) and two environments (the members themselves, and management and operations). Building from cooperative principles and following the development of cooperatives from simple to complex organizations, this paper develops a series of axiomatic propositions for understanding and designing membership structure. Only some of the propositions are testable, and still others are meant only to give continuity and relevance to the propositions as a group (as a theory). Such work should help develop a language for understanding and furthering discussion and research of membership structure and member control in agricultural cooperatives.Agribusiness,

Charting from within a Grounded Concept of Member Control

Organizational charts of membership structures can be useful tools for monitoring member control when they accurately depict a concept of control grounded in context and theory. This paper develops the concept "member control" by placing it within cooperative principles and democratic theory. From this perspective, members control their organization when, through a democratic process of decision making, they are able to keep the cooperative a cooperative, a condition we call "containment." With this conceptual development, a containment method of member control charting is developed and illustrative examples given.Agribusiness,

A pilot socio-economic analysis of QLIF dairy projects

A pilot socio-economic impact assessment was carried out on three dairy projects within QLIF to identify the business, consumer and policy issues likely to influence the adoption of the innovations resulting from QLIF. A socio-economic analysis is pre-sented related to the key outcomes from the three projects which include: manage-ment systems to reduce mastitis and antibiotic use in organic dairy farms and how milk quality can be enhanced through high forage organic feeding systems. Due to a lack financial data costs had to be assumed based on other studies. The socio-economic analysis identified a significant number of potential economic and social implications of implementing strategies developed in the QLIF project that aim at increasing animal health welfare and milk quality

Differing responses in milk composition from introducing rapeseed and naked oats to conventional and organic dairy diets

Dairy products are often considered challenging for health due to their saturated fatty acid content, yet they also provide beneficial nutrients, some unique to ruminants. The degree of fat saturation is influenced by cows’ diets; grazing pasture enhances unsaturated fatty acids in milk compared with conserved forages. These benefits can be partially mimicked by feeding oilseeds and here we consider the impact on milk composition in a 2x2 trial, feeding rapeseed to both conventional and organic cows, finding very differing lipid metabolism in the 4 experimental groups. For milk fat, benefits of organic rather than conventional management (+39% PUFA, +24% long chain omega-3 and +12% conjugated linoleic acid (CLA)) appear complementary to those from feeding rape (+43% MUFA, +10% PUFA, +40% CLA), combining to produce milk 16% lower SFA and higher in MUFA (43%), PUFA (55%) and CLA (59%). Organic and rape feeding provide less omega-3 PUFA than the conventional and control diets, yet contrary to expectations, together they almost doubled (+94%) the omega-3 concentration in milk, implying a 3.8 fold increase in net transfer from diet into milk. Organic and rape feeding also gave lower trace-elements and antioxidants in milk. Greater understanding of these phenomena might enhance the sustainability of dairying

Nutritional characteristics of the diets in organic pig production

A better knowledge of the rations pigs receive, should help identify weaknesses and hence improve the efficiency of organic pig production. A research project was initiated in 8 EU countries (ProPIG from the ERANET CoreOrganic II) involving 72 farms: 59 with sows (53 farrow-to-finish = FF, 5 with and 1 without weaners), 11 fattening (F) and 2 with weaners and fatteners. Farmers were asked to describe their feeding practices and the nutrient content of feeds used was recorded, either from the manufacturer claim or calculated from ingredients. Four FF farms used a single diet for all pigs. For sows, 46% of the farms fed the same diet. For fatteners, 58% of the farms used a single diet, 38% used two diets and 5% used 3 diets. For weaners, 73% of the farms used a single diet and 27 % used two diets. Nutrient feed contents were 13.3 ± 1.0 MJ ME, 141 ± 19 g crude proteins (CP) and 5.0 ± 1.2 g total P (tP) /kg for pregnant sows, 12.8 ± 0.9 MJ ME, 159 ± 19 g CP and 5.2 g ± 1.2 tP/kg for lactating sows, 12.8 ± 1.0, 175 ± 23 g CP, 5.3 g tP/kg for weaners, 12.7 ± 0.1 MJ ME, 165 ± 23 g CP and 4.7 ± 1.1 g tP/kg for fatteners (means ± sd). Major ingredients were triticale (from18% in weaners to 27% in fatteners, 51% homegrown = HG), barley (from 22% in lactating sows to 28% in weaners, 48% HG), wheat (from 18% in weaners to 27% in fatteners, 23% HG), maize (from 13% in pregnant sows to 16% in fatteners, 52% HG), peas (from 8% in pregnant sows to 12% in fatteners, 38% HG), and fava beans (from 3.9% in fatteners to 10.4% in weaners, 67% HG). Results suggest using specific feeding for different types of pigs may improve feeding efficiency and reduce the environmental impact

Impact of US Brown Swiss genetics on milk quality from low-input herds in Switzerland: interactions with season

This study investigated the effect of, and interactions between, US Brown Swiss (BS) genetics and season on milk yield, basic composition and fatty acid profiles, from cows on low-input farms in Switzerland. Milk samples (n=1,976) were collected from 1,220 crossbreed cows with differing proportions of BS, Braunvieh and Original Braunvieh genetics on 40 farms during winter-housing and summer-grazing. Cows with more BS genetics produced more milk in winter but not in summer, possibly because of underfeeding potentially high-yielding cows on low-input pasture-based diets. Cows with more Original Braunvieh genetics produced milk with more (i) nutritionally desirable eicosapentaenoic and docosapentaenoic acids, throughout the year, and (ii) vaccenic and α-linolenic acids, total omega-3 fatty acid concentrations and a higher omega-3/omega-6 ratio only during summer-grazing. This suggests that overall milk quality could be improved by re-focussing breeding strategies on cows’ ability to respond to local dietary environments and seasonal dietary changes

ProPIG - Farm specific strategies to reduce environmental impact by improving health, welfare and nutrition of organic pigs - Final project report

ProPIG consists of 9 partners in 8 countries (AT, CH, CZ, DE, DK, FR, IT, UK) with the aim to assess and improve animal welfare and environmental impact of organic pig farming: • Three husbandry systems: indoor with outside run (IN) / partly outdoor (POUT) / outdoor (OUT) were defined and compared. • Standard Operating Procedures (‘SOPs’) were created for Feed- and Soil Sampling and the process of assessment and feedback (‘Health and welfare planning’). • Animal welfare assessment protocols were developed based on WelfareQuality® and CorePIG. Together with questions regarding environmental impact, nutrition and economy these were integrated into an • Automated Recording and Feedback Software Tool (‘PigSurfer’= PIG SURveillance, FEedback and Reporting), a software tool enabling on-farm data collection and immediate feedback (including presentation of data as benchmarking) using a tablet computer. • Farm visits: After repeated observer training, three visits were carried out, in AT (16 farms), DE (16), DK (11) CH (9), CZ (1), FR (4), IT (9) and UK (8). During the first visit the farmer was interviewed, animals assessed, medicine and productivity records collected and feed and soil samples taken. Results were discussed with each farmer and farm specific goals and measures were agreed during the second visit. Using ‘PigSurfer’ during the final visit, it was possible to assess animal health, welfare, nutrition and feed the results back immediately to farmers as ‘farm plans’ including benchmarking across all 74 pig farms. As a result two practical tools for further use by farmers and advisors were created: • A ‘Catalogue of improvement strategies’ (COIS) for animal welfare challenges was developed based on expert opinion as well as farmers strategies. This was transferred into a ‘Handbook for Farmers’, a hard cover ring-binder, allowing practical application on farm. • Furthermore a ‘Decision support tool for environmental impact’ (‘EDST’) was created in the form of an interactive spreadsheet, which identifies areas of possible improvement regarding environmental impact through a structured questionnaire, suggests measures which might be beneficial and provides information on where to find more detailed resources. Generally based on the parameters assessed, it was shown, that a high level of animal health and welfare was found in most farms, with a few parameters which should be improved across all systems (e.g. vulva deformation from previous injury in sows). When comparing the three husbandry systems, OUT weaners and fatteners had better health regarding respiratory problems and diarrhoea and OUT sows less MMA and lameness, with POUT having some advantages as well over IN (e.g. lameness of sows). Regarding productivity, losses of piglets did not differ across systems; mortality of IN fattening pigs was lower than in POUT and their feed conversion rate was better. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of global warming potential (GWP) was influenced mainly by feeding of fattening pigs and variation within a husbandry system was higher than between systems, indicating that good values can be achieved in all systems. Regarding acidification potential (AP) POUT were better than IN and regarding eutrophication potential (EP) POUT were better than OUT. Three clusters were identified on the basis of environmental impact, a ‘high, ‘medium’ and ‘lower’ with similar numbers of each husbandry system in all three of them. The three systems did not differ regarding N balances. After clustering, N import from feed purchase was identified as main influencing factor. IN were significantly lower than POUT/OUT regarding P balances. No significant relationship between health, welfare and environmental impacts was found when comparing the LCA clusters with an ‘animal health and welfare score’ (‘%GOOD’), individual animal based parameters or correlations between AP/EP/GWP and the ‘%GOOD. Farm specific strategies were evaluated by farmers’ opinion and assessing within-farm improvement in measured criteria over 12 months. The median number of aims per farm was 2 (1 to 4), with fertility, nutrition, health and lesions most commonly addressed. In total 74.8 % of measures were partly/completely implemented and 81.6 % of goals were partly/completely achieved

Intramuscular sex steroid hormones are associated with skeletal muscle strength and power in women with different hormonal status

Peer reviewe

Dystrophy-associated caveolin-3 mutations reveal that caveolae couple IL6/STAT3 signaling with mechanosensing in human muscle cells

Caveolin-3 is the major structural protein of caveolae in muscle. Mutations in the CAV3 gene cause different types of myopathies with altered membrane integrity and repair, expression of muscle proteins, and regulation of signaling pathways. We show here that myotubes from patients bearing the CAV3P28L and R26Q mutations present a dramatic decrease of caveolae at the plasma membrane, resulting in abnormal response to mechanical stress. Mutant myotubes are unable to buffer the increase in membrane tension induced by mechanical stress. This results in impaired regulation of the IL6/STAT3 signaling pathway leading to its constitutive hyperactivation and increased expression of muscle genes. These defects are fully reversed by reassembling functional caveolae through expression ofcaveolin-3. Our study reveals that under mechanical stress the regulation of mechan-oprotection by caveolae is directly coupled with the regulation of IL6/STAT3 signaling inmuscle cells and that this regulation is absent in Cav3-associated dystrophic patients