Why regionality is an important value in organic agriculture: the case of the Netherlands

Organic agriculture is a system of production and consumption in which values play a prominent role. The new IFOAM principles reflect the current worldwide consensus on the most important values of organic agriculture. Regionality or proximity is not explicitly mentioned in these principles. Also in the present EU-regulation on organic agriculture hardly any standards are formulated concerning this issue. On the other hand, some private organic labels do have extra standards - concerning for instance the origin of organic feed - while both producers and consumers of organic products often mention regional production as an important value. The question is whether, and if so why regionality is an important issue to be dealt with in the upcoming reformed EU-regulation on organic agriculture. To answer this question, the consequences are evaluated of the de-velopment of intensive, large-scale organic animal production in the Netherlands in the light of the value of regionality

Future research priorities of Organic Agriculture. Policy paper of the IFOAM EU Group

This policy paper presents the main research priorities for organic farming agreed by the IFOAM EU Group. It identifies the main clusters both in a table format and with a more detailed explanation of the individual priorities. The paper was discussed at the board meeting of 13th March 2004, amended by additional input from national farmers’ associations and various research institutes from all EU members, revised with a priorisation exercise at the board meeting of 26th June in Lednice (Czech Rep) and finally was reviewed and approved at the board meeting in Bonn the 3rd September

The Law of Small Abatements: Prices over Quantities in Realistic Climate Policies

A fundamental question of high practical relevance for climate policy design is whether price controls such as CO2 taxes, or quantity restrictions such as emission quotas should be preferred. I show that as the reach of climate policies is limited in terms of either suboptimally low reduction targets or the policy's extent over only parts of the world, the likelihood of price measures to be more advantageous in terms of minimizing uncertainty related welfare losses increases. The increase of the relative advantage of the price mechanisms over quantity measures may be more than proportional to the regional limitedness of the policy, suggesting that even for relatively important climate coalitions the identified factor implies a clear advantage for price measures. This analysis of the prices vs. quantities question is closer to so far on a high political level seriously discussed climate policies, not to speak of already implemented local or regional climate policies, than previous theoretical literature addressing the issue, which typically relied on the assumption of first bests (i.e. global) policies. Illustrating the main thought of the analysis, I explain why in the example of policies with an extent corresponding to the current Kyoto mechanism, the simple theoretical weighting of the price vs. the quantity approach seems to favor price mechanisms independently of the exact form of the global abatement cost and benefit curves.prices versus quantities, greenhouse gas tax, emission quotas, tradable permits, uncertainty, emission abatement costs, climate change costs, emission abatement benefits, regional climate policy, unilateral climate policy.

Correlating wine quality indicators to chemical and sensory measurements.

Twenty-seven commercial Californian Cabernet Sauvignon wines of different quality categories were analyzed with sensory and chemical methods. Correlations between five quality proxies-points awarded during a wine competition, wine expert scores, retail price, vintage, and wine region-were correlated to sensory attributes, volatile compounds, and elemental composition. Wine quality is a multi-faceted construct, incorporating many different layers. Depending on the quality proxy studied, significant correlations between quality and attributes, volatiles and elements were found, some of them previously reported in the literature

Devolved immigration policy : will it work in Scotland?

In February 2005, the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke outlined a “five year plan” aimed at changing fundamentally the way immigration to the United Kingdom is managed. What does this new system mean for Scotland, a country with a government committed to maintaining historical high levels of net-migration