(Dis)Connections: Exploring the conceptualisation, methodologies and promises of assemblage and systems thinking approaches in food system research

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The promised land? Exploring the future visions and narrative silences of cellular agriculture in news and industry media

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Antibiotic stewardship and its implications for agricultural animal-human relationships: Insights from an intensive dairy farm in England

The concept of antibiotic stewardship has recently gained prominence in UK and EU policy and practice as part of wider efforts to reduce antibiotic use in agriculture and respond to concerns about antimicrobial resistance. The purpose of the paper is to provide initial insights into what antibiotic stewardship might mean in practice for agricultural animal-human relationships, particularly within intensive systems. We do this by firstly outlining the anticipated implications for agricultural animals by different stakeholders. Secondly, we develop the concept of heterogeneous biosocial collectivities through engagement with the literatures on care and thirdly we apply this concept to one case study (intensive dairy) farm to explore empirically how animal-human relationships are changing in response to antibiotic stewardship. Three on-farm heterogeneous biosocial collectivities are identified, each of which coheres around a particular problem of life associated with distinctive practices of care and antibiotic use resulting in collectivity specific responses to antibiotic stewardship. These collectivities are: the calf collectivity and the problem of immunodeficient life; the milking cow collectivity and the problem of ‘stoic’ life; the dry cow collectivity and the problem of fatigued life. In conclusion we point to: the uneven effects for animal-human relationships of changes in antibiotic use including in particular practices of care and their consequences; an intensification of human control over animals with variable implications for their health and welfare. The analysis raises questions for future research, in particular the need to test the assumption that reducing antibiotic use will stimulate systemic change in intensive animal agriculture towards sustainable, highwelfare, and more extensive systems of production

Can resistant infections be perceptible in UK dairy farming?

This paper interrogates the claim that antimicrobial resistant infections are rarely encountered in animal agriculture. This has been widely reiterated by a range of academic, policy and industry stakeholders in the UK. Further support comes from the Animal and Plant Health Agency’s (APHA) passive clinical surveillance regime, which relies on veterinarians to submit samples for analysis and similarly reports low levels of resistance amongst key animal pathogens. Building on social science work on knowledge-practices of animal health and disease, and insights from emerging literature on non-knowledge or ‘agnotology, we investigate the conditions shaping what is known about antimicrobial-resistant infections on farms. In so doing, we find that how on-farm knowledge is produced about resistant infection is concurrently related to domains of imperceptibility or what cannot be known in the context of current practices.The paper discusses the findings of ethnographic research undertaken on an East Midlands dairy farm which highlight the following specific findings. First, farmers and veterinarians, when observing instances of treatment failure, draw on an experiential repertoire that effaces resistances and instead foregrounds the complexities of host-pathogen interaction, or failings in human behaviour, over pathogen-antibiotic interactions. Second, the knowledge-practices of both farmers and veterinarians, although adept at identifying and diagnosing infectious disease are not equipped to make resistance perceptible. Third, this imperceptibility has implications for antibiotic use practices. Most notably, veterinarians anticipate resistance when making antibiotic choices. However, because of the absence of farm level knowledge of resistance this anticipatory logic is informed through the prevalence of resistance ‘at large’.The analysis has implications for the existing passive resistance surveillance regime operating in the dairy sector, which relies on veterinarians and farmers voluntarily submitting samples for diagnostic and susceptibility testing. In effect this entrenches farm level imperceptibility and effacement by farmers and veterinarians within the national dairy surveillance regime. However, we also highlight opportunities for providing farm specific knowledge of resistance through the anticipatory logic of veterinarians and a more active regime of surveillance

Imagining biofuels: building agricultural supply chains in the UK: a comparison of UK policy expectations with on-farm perspectives

This thesis aims to drawn on theoretical insights from science and technology studies and rural studies literatures to interrogate the potential agricultural system and on-farm changes required for developing lignocellulosic biofuel supply chains in the UK. Previous work has largely examined first generation, food based biofuels, with limited focus on the prospects for lignocellulosic technologies. Likewise policy identifies a number of challenges for lignocellulosic biofuels, commercial, technical, and sustainability, that require policy solutions. However, biofuels straddle the agricultural-energy sectors. The deployment of these technologies will demand the adoption of certain practices and crops by farmers, as well as broader changes to agricultural systems. These important components for delivering lignocellulosic biofuels require examination which has so far been limited. Using semi-structured interviews alongside documentary analysis I identify the ways in which policy constructs and imagines the interface between lignocellulosic biofuels and agriculture, before interrogating these tacit assumptions through comparison with perspectives from farmers, agricultural intermediaries and industry representatives. A key finding is that through knowing farmers and agricultural systems with modelling alone, important avenues for producing and procuring biomass for use in lignocellulosic biofuel production are obscured, whereas significant barriers are presented as readily negotiable. This thesis argues the following points. Firstly, there is an emerging disjuncture between biofuel imaginaries and agricultural imaginaries. This is particularly apparent as food security concerns re-emerge and Common Agricultural Policy moves towards embedding types of multifunctional arable production which both exclude dedicated non-food energy cropping. Secondly, policy understands farmers as rational economic decision makers influenced by price, ignoring entrenched on farm practices, technologies, values and farmer decision making which are difficult to untangle. These factors can create resistance to increasing straw baling, or the cultivation of dedicated energy crops. Fourthly, marginal land and straw are material heterogeneous resources not the fungible commodities imagined in policy. This materiality shapes how land and biomass is and can be used. Foregrounding these considerations identifies oil seed rape straw as a potentially large, but challenging opportunity. Finally, agricultural intermediaries are a crucial link in biomass supply chains but have been entirely ignored in policy. Contractors and merchants undertake in-field operations, own large scale machinery and manage inter-relationships between farmers and end users. Agronomists are important land management advisors and involved in the soft sell of new technologies and practices. Neither groups are addressed in policy and require active enlistment in lignocellulosic developments. These insights highlight the following: a need for policy makers to forge better linkages between biofuel, bioenergy and agricultural policy domains; the incorporation of qualitative insights into policy understandings of on-farm decision making, practices, biomass materials and farmer values; the engagement with a wider range of agricultural actors to better deliver desired agricultural change

What role does the UK general anti-abuse rule play in preventing tax avoidance using loan relationships and how does this role affect the way we should conceptualise the GAAR when applied to other corporation tax matters?

This dissertation considers the role of the UK General Anti Abuse Rule ('GAAR') in challenging loan relationship based tax avoidance in comparison with the other measures, which are at the disposal of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. In particular, the potential effectiveness of the GAAR is compared with the loan relationship Targeted Anti-Avoidance Rule at s455B - s455D of the Corporation Tax Act 2009 ('CT A 2009'), Section 441, CT A 2009 and the Ramsay Principle. The analysis is based on a detailed review of 13 recent loan relationship avoidance cases, including $Greene$ $King$, $Stagecoach$ and $Suez$ $Teesside$, and provides an assessment of the impact GAAR could have on these cases. Finally, this dissertation briefly considers how conclusions reached in respect of loan relationships may affect the role of the GAAR when applied to other corporation tax matters

World Happiness Report 2020

This year the World Happiness Report focuses especially on the environment – social, urban, and natural. After presenting our usual country rankings and explanations of life evaluations in Chapter 2, we turn to these three categories of environment, and how they affect happiness. The social environment is dealt with in detail in the later parts of Chapter 2. It is also a main focus of Chapter 7, which looks at happiness in the Nordic countries and finds that higher personal and institutional trust are key factors in explaining why life evaluations are so high in those countries. Urban life is the focus of Chapter 3, which examines the happiness ranking of cities, and of Chapter 4, which compares happiness in cities and rural areas across the world. An Annex considers recent international efforts to develop common definitions of urban, peri-urban, and rural communities. The natural environment is the focus of Chapter 5, which examines how the local environment affects happiness. Chapter 6 takes a longer and broader focus on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The wide range of the SDGs links them to all three of the environmental themes considered in other chapters

Late-Time Behavior of Stellar Collapse and Explosions: I. Linearized Perturbations

Problem with the figures should be corrected. Apparently a broken uuencoder was the cause.Comment: 16pp, RevTex, 6 figures (included), NSF-ITP-93-8