The Effects of Energy Price Increases on Dutch Horticulture

This paper elaborates on the effects of a rise in energy costs for Dutch glasshouse horticultural producers. The effects on production, bilateral trade and consumption in 25 European countries plus Morocco, Turkey and the Rest of the World, are estimated using a version of the HORTUS partial equilibrium supply and demand model. This model includes 11 sorts of fruit and vegetables, and two categories of ornamental plants and flowers. As energy, especially natural gas, is a major intermediate input in Dutch glasshouse horticulture, it has potentially large impacts on producers and trade. The results indicate that a 10 percent increase in energy prices could cause significant shifts in production and trade flows, as well as some changes in consumption patterns. The effects are larger for more export oriented products, and dependent on the nature of competition on foreign as well as domestic markets.energy costs, glasshouse vegetables and flowers, model of international trade, Crop Production/Industries, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, F15, F17, Q17,

A retrospective study on Equine Herpes Virus type-1 associated myeloencephalopathy in France (2008-2011)

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Performance Profile and Carcass Characteristics of Steers Fed Optaflexx

An experiment evaluated the live BW response of steers being fed Optaflexx for various durations. The design consisted of two Optaflexx levels (0 vs. 200 mg per steer daily) and two Optaflexx feeding durations (28 or 42 days immediately prior to slaughter). However, Optaflexx was started on the same day (day 151 of the feeding period). Feeding 200 mg/steer daily of Optaflexx significantly (P\u3c0.01) improved final BW, ADG, and F:G compared to controls. Feeding 200 mg /steer daily of Optaflexx provided 16.4 and 18.8 lb of added BW above controls for the 28 and 42 feeding duration, respectively, but most (approximately 87%) of this weight gain was within the first 28 days of the time that Optaflexx was fed

Performance Profile and Carcass Characteristics of Steers Fed Optaflexx

An experiment evaluated the live BW response of steers being fed Optaflexx for various durations. The design consisted of two Optaflexx levels (0 vs. 200 mg per steer daily) and two Optaflexx feeding durations (28 or 42 days immediately prior to slaughter). However, Optaflexx was started on the same day (day 151 of the feeding period). Feeding 200 mg/steer daily of Optaflexx significantly (P\u3c0.01) improved final BW, ADG, and F:G compared to controls. Feeding 200 mg /steer daily of Optaflexx provided 16.4 and 18.8 lb of added BW above controls for the 28 and 42 feeding duration, respectively, but most (approximately 87%) of this weight gain was within the first 28 days of the time that Optaflexx was fed

Kleine bedrijven hebben weinig vertrouwen in de toekomst van het bedrijf

Het vertrouwen van boeren en tuinders in de toekomst van hun bedrijf is een graadmeter voor de economische gesteldheid van de agrarische sector. Een groot deel van de agrariërs ziet de toekomst op korte termijn optimistisch tegemoet. Op lange termijn hebben ondernemers op grotere bedrijven meer vertrouwen in de toekomst dan die op kleinere bedrijve

Acceptance conditions in automated negotiation

In every negotiation with a deadline, one of the negotiating parties has to accept an offer to avoid a break off. A break off is usually an undesirable outcome for both parties, therefore it is important that a negotiator employs a proficient mechanism to decide under which conditions to accept. When designing such conditions one is faced with the acceptance dilemma: accepting the current offer may be suboptimal, as better offers may still be presented. On the other hand, accepting too late may prevent an agreement from being reached, resulting in a break off with no gain for either party. Motivated by the challenges of bilateral negotiations between automated agents and by the results and insights of the automated negotiating agents competition (ANAC), we classify and compare state-of-the-art generic acceptance conditions. We focus on decoupled acceptance conditions, i.e. conditions that do not depend on the bidding strategy that is used. We performed extensive experiments to compare the performance of acceptance conditions in combination with a broad range of bidding strategies and negotiation domains. Furthermore we propose new acceptance conditions and we demonstrate that they outperform the other conditions that we study. In particular, it is shown that they outperform the standard acceptance condition of comparing the current offer with the offer the agent is ready to send out. We also provide insight in to why some conditions work better than others and investigate correlations between the properties of the negotiation environment and the efficacy of acceptance condition