Search

This paper identified the intangible aspects (IA) that generate impacts in companies of the agricultural sector in the different stages of the companies life cycle. This paper is based on a systematic review methodology to identify intangibles in the agricultural sector. Studies on the life cycle of companies were analyzed to classify the impact of intangible aspects according to the reality of companies. Identify the intangible aspects that impact the agricultural sector through a review of the scientific literature. How intangible aspects affect each stage of the life cycle of companies in the sector shows that they have a different impact depending on the period in which the company is located. Although, much of the previous literature has suggested that intangible aspects have positive effects on a variety of performance variables, there are no scientific studies that specifically address the importance of these intangible aspects in the life cycle of companies in the agricultural sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on national agricultural trade panel data of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) countries from 2002 to 2020, the structural characteristics of the RCEP national agricultural trade spatial network are reconstructed by the social network analysis method in this paper. Specifically, the characteristics consist of overall characteristics, individual characteristics, core-periphery structure analysis, and block models. Moreover, the influence factors on the agricultural trade network are also examined by the QAP regression model. The conclusions are summarized as follows. Firstly, the agricultural trade in RCEP countries has significant spatial correlation, showing favorable stability and accessibility. Secondly, Australia, China, Thailand, and Vietnam are the central actor's leading position in the correlation network. While Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and other countries are in the marginal position. Thirdly, the network can be divided into four blocks, including the net benefit block, the two-way spillover block, the broker block, and the net spillover block. The spillover effect between the blocks is transitive. And finally, geographical distance, economic and social conditions, resource endowment, and language proximity index significantly impact the RCEP agricultural trade network structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing food waste became a priority in the past decades for the majority of nations around the world. But while the interest in this topic is high, not all countries, including Romania - our case study-accurately estimate household food waste quantities. Determining the reality of food waste at household levels is highly valuable because in the end, it can bring insight into what would be the best methods to reduce waste and optimize resource consumption. The current study determined the causes, quantities, and main components of food waste in Romanian households by applying and subsequently analyzing a food waste survey. Our purpose was to determine not only how much food Romanians throw away per week, but also what type of food. In addition, by studying the households' consumption habits we identified the main behavioral triggers of food waste. By applying the survey to a relevant sample of our country's population, we obtained a relatively accurate depiction of food waste attitudes among Romanian consumers and our paper can be a starting point in developing an educational tool aiming to reduce food waste in households. This type of study is important not only for informational reasons but also from a societal standpoint. As a complex community, part of larger international structures and agreements, (such as the European Union, the United Nations, or The Paris Agreement on Climate Change), Romania needs to align itself with the other partners in order to decrease the negative impact on the environment of food waste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study evaluated, through physical and physiological tests, the seed quality of a landrace fava bean variety in different packaging materials and storage periods, aiming to guarantee the conservation of their quality in seed banks and facilities. The methodology used was the one recommended by the Rules for Seed Analysis (RAS - Brasil, 2009) and minimum descriptors for Phaseolus lunatus L. The data were subjected to analysis of variance by the F-test at 5% signififance to verify the presence of significant interactions and the individual effects of each treatment. The test of multiple comparison of means was performed by the Tukey test at 5% significance between common treatments. The Dunnett test was used at 5% significance to compare the control means with the means of the treatments. R egression analysis was performed to study the effect of storage on the variables evaluated. All analyses were performed using the R software. From the results, it can be concluded that the storage of fava bean seeds is viable in small rural properties in impermeable packaging materials and aluminized polyethylene bags. The germination and vigor of the seeds analyzed in this study decreased throughout the storage period regardless of the type of packaging used. It is not recommended to store fava bean seeds in permeable paper packaging as they have the lowest quality indices (germination and vigor) at the end of the storage period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the development and dynamics of green manure research, we collected 802 and 4588 papers on green manure research from China national knowledge infrastructure (CNKI) and Web of Science (WoS) between 1992 and 2021, respectively, and conducted quantitative and visual analyses based on bibliometric methods on the annual number of publications, authors and institutions, keywords, and emergent words. The main research hotspots in the field of green manure are discussed and summarized based on the results of the visualization analysis and the important publications explored by the results of the visualization analysis. The results showed that: the overall number of publications on green manure research exhibits an increasing trend, and research in this field is receiving more and more attention; the United States is the core country in this research field, with a great influence; although, the number of Chinese publications is large, the intermediary centrality value is small and the level of scientific research needs to be improved; the research characteristics in the field of green manure research mainly focus on green manure cultivation technology, the effects on soil and crops, and the effects on pests and diseases. The study was conducted based on CiteSpace, a visualization tool of bibliometrics, with comprehensive literature information and intuitive results, providing important references for relevant researchers to understand the extent of research in this field, academic communication, and grasp research dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maintaining a rural-urban balance is absolutely necessary in the context of the challenges related to food security and environmental protection as well as the perspectives of urban agglomeration. This paper highlighted the impact of the main events from the last 30 years on the rural population. This study used the vector autoregressive model (VAR) to investigate the estimates and analyse the dynamic impact of innovations on the system of variables. Key issues that influenced certain periods in the analyzed interval were highlighted, which clearly show the impact on the analyzed variables using variance decomposition. The cost of living in rural areas is increasing, so more and more inhabitants give up growing certain crops or raising certain animals, thus having to search for food to survive, leading to additional wage income to cover these costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an essential way to enhance farmers’ self-development ability, off-farm employment plays an indispensable role in farmers’ multidimensional poverty reduction in many countries. Employing a survey of 1926 farmers in five provinces of the Yellow River Basin in China, this paper examined the multi-dimensional poverty reduction effect of off-farm employment and the heterogeneous influence of different dimensions of off-farm employment (modes, levels, distances and frequency). The results showed that (1) although absolute poverty in the income dimension was largely eliminated in the Yellow River Basin, the poverty in social resources, transportation facilities, employment security were the key bottlenecks restricting farmers’ self-development. (2) The province with the best multidimensional poverty reduction effect for non-farm employment was Shaanxi, with the largest contribution to employment security. (3) Improving off-farm employment level, distance and time can significantly alleviate the multi-dimensional poverty of farmers. Therefore, to lessen the multi-dimensional poverty of farmers in the Yellow River Basin, it is necessary to focus on the governance of multi-dimensional key poverty-stricken areas, such as the middle and upper courses of the Yellow River, adopting multidimensional poverty alleviation strategy of off-farm employment according to local conditions, working on the farmers’ deficiencies in social resources, mobility, employment security, and deepening the effect of off-farm employment on benefiting farmers and helping the poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multivariate time series forecasting has an important role in many real-world domains. Especially, price prediction has always been on the focus of researchers. Yet, it is a challenging task that requires the capturing of intra-series and inter-series correlations. Most of the models in literature focus only on the correlation in temporal domain. In this paper, we have curated a new dataset from the official website of Turkish Ministry of Commerce. The dataset consists of daily prices and trade volume of vegetables and covers 1791 days between January 1, 2018 and November 26, 2022. A Spectral Temporal Graph Neural Network (StemGNN) is employed on the curated dataset and the results are given in comparison to Convolutional neural networks (CNN), Long short-term memory (LSTM) and Random Forest models. GNN architecture achieved a state-of-the-art result such as mean absolute error (MAE): 1,37 and root mean squared error (RMSE): 1.94). To our knowledge, this is one of the few studies that investigates GNN for time series analysis and the first study in architecture field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: Different types of supplied roughage may cause losses in the chemical composition and digestibility of gliricidia (Gliricidia sepium [Jacq.] Kunth ex Walp.) depending on their making and fed-out management. This study has summarized data from scientific studies on gliricidia and compared its nutritional value in various fed forms using a systematic review approach and principal component analysis (PCA). A robust survey of scientific papers was realized on web indexes of periodicals and databases from 1990 to 2023. Data from 100 scientific researches has been compiled and analyzed. In 40% of the trials, the gliricidia nutritional value was determined as fresh leaves, while 30% was in the form of ‘leaves + thin stems’. Gliricidia was evaluated as silage in 11% of the opportunities, followed by 10% as leaf meal and 9% as hay. Non-fiber carbohydrates, crude protein (CP), and organic matter digestibility (OM) had negative correlations with neutral detergent fiber (NDF), acid detergent fiber (ADF), and lignin. Only NDF, ADF, and CP contents could explain 71% of the total data variation (PC1 and PC2). There was no discrimination among fed forms, so they showed similar nutrient compositions. Eventual nutrient losses reported in the scientific researches owing to ensilage, haymaking, and leaf meal-making processes do not mischaracterize the gliricidia nutritional value. The assorted manners of roughage making, and fed-out management traditionally performed by farmers can conserve the excellent nutritional quality of gliricidia.