HEALTH CHECK AND FARM EFFICIENCY: A COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF FOUR EUROPEAN AGRICULTURAL REGIONS

The European Commission has always considered the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as a dynamic political tool that aims to link the agricultural sector with the evolving of the economic, financial, social and political dynamics that distinguish the Member States of the European Union. From this standpoint, the Health Check (HC) is much more than a simple assessment of the state of health of European agriculture; it is a drawing up of the “new rules” that are to manage the relations between farms and the market, on which the future efficiency and survival of the said farms and the production sectors that characterise entire European agricultural regions will depend. In this context, the aim of this paper is to present and analyse the "innovations" of the future CAP compared to the current subsidy management system. In particular, the impact of the modifications of the HC – relative to the methods for funding farms due to the transition to the regionalised Single (Farm) Payment Scheme (SPS) and to the new rates of modulation – on the competitiveness of farms specialised in certain production sectors of four European regions will be considered: Emilia- Romagna (IT), Kassel (DE), Anatoliki-Makedonia-Thraki (GR) and Ostra Mallansverige (SE). The assessment of the impact of the HC on the competitiveness of farms is made by taking the technical efficiency index, estimated by a DEA model, as a proxy for the capacity of farms to use factors of production to their best advantage with respect to the farming system adopted and hence to be able to be competitive with other enterprises in the same sector. At the same time, the analysis of the impact of the HC measures is carried out using the “generalised” Positive Mathematical Programming method in order to enable a comparison between European regions. The integration of the two methods applied to the data of the European FADN enables an in-depth assessment of the impacts and a critical evaluation of the goals that the Community reform proposal is expected to attain.Health Check, Single Farm Payments, Technical Efficiency Index, DEA model, Positive Mathematical Programming., Agricultural and Food Policy, Political Economy, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Q10, Q12, Q18,

Innovation in Estimation of Revenue and Cost Functions in PMP Using FADN Information at Regional Level

The objective of this paper is to present an evolution of PMP model suitable to estimate the revenue function and to provide price elasticity due to the variation of subsidies at farm level, especially if they are decoupled. This problem arises when individual data of farm households in a given region, coming from FADN, are used for implement PMP models finalized to policy analysis. This paper presents the theoretical background of the proposed innovations and empirical evidence on the basis of a sample of farms included in FADN database in Italy.Positive mathematical programming, Demand function, Agricultural policies evaluation, Agricultural and Food Policy, Demand and Price Analysis,

AN IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF THE FUTURE CAP REFORM ON THE ITALIAN TOMATO SECTOR

The Health Check (HC) document traces the path for a new revision of the CAP. The communication content can be summarised in the following points: decoupling at regional and not at historical level, a more intensive modulation mechanism differentiated according to the total volume of subsidy received by the farm and a new implementation of the art. 69. The aim of this paper is to assess the effect of the HC on the farms producing fruits and vegetables in Italy, with a particular emphasis on the processed tomato production. The model based on the PMP approach simulates the regionalisation mechanism and the new modulation per brackets. The analysis carried out on a FADN sample of farms located in Emilia-Romagna region highlights as the HC new measures affect the farm economic performances but not the input allocation choice. The flat rate doesn’t produce perturbation in the relative convenience of the crops maintaining unchanged the degree of substitution among activities. Only when the CAP mechanism moves from a coupling scenario to a total decoupling one and in the case of a variation in price levels the modifications inside the production plan are evident.Future CAP reforms, Tomato sector, CAP assessment, Agricultural and Food Policy, Political Economy, Q10, Q18,

Histology of non-melanoma skin cancers. An Update

Non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in humans. Several different non-melanoma skin cancers have been reported in the literature, with several histologic variants that frequently cause important differential diagnoses with other cutaneous tumors basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common malignant skin tumor, with different histologic variants that are associated with a greater or less aggressive behavior and that usually may be confused with other primitive skin tumors. Actinic keratosis, Bowen's disease, keratoacanthoma, and invasive squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) correspond to the other line of NMSC, that may have only local tumoral behavior, easy to treat and with local management (as in the case of actinic keratosis (AK), Bowen's disease, and keratoacanthoma) or a more aggressive behavior with a potential metastatic spread, as in case of invasive SCC. Therefore, histopathology serves as the gold standard during daily clinical practice, in order to improve the therapeutical approaches to patients with NMSC and to understand the distinct histopathological features of NMSC. Here, we reported the main pathological features of different non-melanoma skin cancers

Atrophic and annular scarring alopecia of the scalp as a finding of an underlying systemic sarcoidosis.

No abstract available</p

Folliculotropic Cutaneous Metastases and Lymphangitis Carcinomatosa: When Cutaneous Metastases of Breast Carcinoma Are Mistaken for Cutaneous Infections

No abstract available.</p

Impact assessment of greening and the issue of nitrogen-fixing crops: Evidence from northern Italy

In the CAP reform 2014–2020, the 'green' component of direct payments remunerates environmental services and includes three greening requirements: crop diversification, maintenance of permanent grassland and establishment of an ecological focus area (EFA). This paper evaluates the effect of 'greening' and payment redistribution on farm incomes and land use, considering two different hypotheses of the EFA weighting factor (Ewf) for nitrogen-fixing crops. The evaluation is developed at farm level by a positive mathematical programming (PMP) model and applied to more than 2,000 farms in northern Italy. The results show that crop diversification will mainly affect the cereal area, with significant reductions in maize and wheat, while the EFA requirement, especially with the lower Ewf, will boost the spread of protein crops. Nevertheless, 'greening' does not significantly affect farm income, while greater economic effects are mainly due to the redistribution of direct payments

Progettazione e realizzazione di un data warehouse: il caso di studio di una cooperativa agricola

Questo lavoro consiste nella realizzazione di un datawarehouse per il supporto ai processi aziendali di controllo delle vendite, delle rotazioni di magazzino e delle movimentazioni di cassa. Vengono esposte le diverse fasi della costruzione del datawarehouse: lo studio dei processi e l'analisi dei requisiti, la progettazione, l'analisi degli strumenti software utilizzati, la realizzazione delle procedure di estrazione, la trasformazione e il caricamento. Di ogni fase saranno presentate sia le problematiche di ordine generale, sia le soluzioni ai problemi riscontrati durante l'esperienza diretta con la realtà aziendale

Peroxisomes proliferation and pharmacological stimulation of autophagy in rat liver: evidence to support that autophagy may remove the “older” peroxisomes

Like mitochondria, peroxisomes produce reactive oxygen species (ROS), compounds which have been implicated to play an important role in many degenerative diseases and aging itself, and an exaggerated ROS production might occur in altered or older organelles. Growing evidence shows that autophagy, a required function in cell housekeeping during fasting, can remove damaged macromolecules, organelles, and membranes selectively. Proliferation of peroxisomes can be enhanced in liver cells by perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), which causes a marked increase of the Acyl-CoA oxidase (ACOX) activity and no significant change in urate oxidase (UOX) activity. The administration of antilipolytic drugs to fasted animals was shown to intensify autophagy. Here we tested the hypothesis that autophagy may distinguish and remove older from younger peroxisomes in rat liver. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were given PFOA (150 mg/kg body weight) or vehicle. Animals were sacrificed at different times following PFOA administration, and 3 h after the induction of autophagy with the antilipolytic agent 3,5-dimethyl pyrazole (DMP, 12 mg/kg body weight). The levels of ACOX and UOX activity were measured in the liver tissue. Results showed that autophagy caused a parallel, significant decrease in both enzymes activity in control rats, and that in PFOA-treated rats the effects were different and changed with PFOA time administration. Changes are compatible with the hypothesis that newly formed ACOX-rich peroxisomes are resistant to pexophagy and that sensitivity to pexophagy increases with increasing peroxisomal “age.” In conclusion, there is indirect evidence supporting the hypothesis that autophagy may recognize and degrade older peroxisomes

Overview of self-mixing interferometer applications to mechanical engineering

We present an overview of the applications of self-mixing interferometer (SMI) to tasks of interest for mechanical engineering, namely high-resolution measurement of linear displacements, measurements of angles (tilt, yaw, and roll), measurements of subnanometer vibrations, and absolute distance, all on a remote target-representative of the tool-carrying turret of a tool-machine. Along with the advantages of SMI-compactness, low cost, minimum invasiveness, ease of use, and good accuracy, we illustrate the typical performance achieved by the basic SMI sensors, that is, the versions requiring a minimum of signal processing and discuss special features and problems of each approach