Exploring the market potential of 'local' in food systems

Local food initiatives create a niche market in many developed countries where consumer choice is being met with an expanding offering in both conventional as well as complementary retail outlets. Supermarkets in conjunction with the food service sector currently dominate food sales and consumption, and are likely to do so for the foreseeable future. However, the local food sector offers an opportunity for implementing niche marketing strategies for many businesses. Local food activities tend to be relatively independent activities and a clearer definition for “local” food would assist in consolidating this important component of the food system. Related to this, consumers would benefit from the establishment of some form of assurance system for the ‘localness’ of food. In the UK, with its well established local food market, farmers’ markets, farm shops and box schemes are currently having the largest impact in terms of total sales. Hence further research is required to confirm that support for similar business ventures in Australia would be a viable strategy for strengthening its local food systems.

Spatial patterns and environmental constraints on ecosystem services at a catchment scale

Improved understanding and prediction of the fundamental environmental controls on ecosystem service supply across the landscape will help to inform decisions made by policy makers and land-water managers. To evaluate this issue for a local catchment case study, we explored metrics and spatial patterns of service supply for water quality regulation, agriculture production, carbon storage, and biodiversity for the Macronutrient Conwy catchment. Methods included using ecosystem models such as LUCI and JULES, integration of national scale field survey datasets, earth observation products and plant trait databases, to produce finely resolved maps of species richness and primary production. Analyses were done with both 1x1 km gridded and subcatchment data. A common single gradient characterised catchment scale ecosystem services supply with agricultural production and carbon storage at opposing ends of the gradient as reported for a national-scale assessment. Species diversity was positively related to production due to the below national average productivity levels in the Conwy combined with the unimodal relationship between biodiversity and productivity at the national scale. In contrast to the national scale assessment, a strong reduction in water quality as production increased was observed in these low productive systems. Various soil variables were tested for their predictive power of ecosystem service supply. Soil carbon, nitrogen, their ratio and soil pH all had double the power of rainfall and altitude, each explaining around 45% of variation but soil pH is proposed as a potential metric for ecosystem service supply potential as it is a simple and practical metric which can be carried out in the field with crowd-sourcing technologies now available. The study emphasises the importance of considering multiple ecosystem services together due to the complexity of covariation at local and national scales, and the benefits of exploiting a wide range of metrics for each service to enhance data robustness.

Identifying seed uptake pathways: The spread of Agya amoah rice cultivar in southwestern Ghana

A study was carried out to identify the factors that contributed to the natural spread and uptake of a rainfed rice variety named Agya Amoah in the Western Region of Ghana after introduction of a small amount (0.5 kg) of seed in 1987 by a small-scale farmer. Fifteen years after its introduction over 73% of rice farmers had grown the variety in the Western Region. Initial awareness of the variety was created by information provided mainly by friends, seeing the variety grown in fields and from relatives. Seed for initial planting of the variety was purchased from other farmers by 67% of farmers, but in the most recent season 77% of farmers used their own saved seed. Annual incremental income per household from the replacement of the previously most widely grown variety with Agya Amoah was estimated to be US $282. The results show that informal systems can result in relatively fast spread and extensive uptake. Local seed systems need to be understood to design appropriate activities that are likely to lead to rapid spread and equitable distribution of introduced varieties, irrespective of characteristics such as wealth and kin.

Researching farmer behaviour in climate change adaptation and sustainable agriculture: lessons learned from five case studies

Understanding farmer behaviour is needed for local agricultural systems to produce food sustainably while facing multiple pressures. We synthesize existing literature to identify three fundamental questions that correspond to three distinct areas of knowledge necessary to understand farmer behaviour: 1) decision-making model; 2) cross-scale and cross-level pressures; and 3) temporal dynamics. We use this framework to compare five interdisciplinary case studies of agricultural systems in distinct geographical contexts across the globe. We find that these three areas of knowledge are important to understanding farmer behaviour, and can be used to guide the interdisciplinary design and interpretation of studies in the future. Most importantly, we find that these three areas need to be addressed simultaneously in order to understand farmer behaviour. We also identify three methodological challenges hindering this understanding: the suitability of theoretical frameworks, the trade-offs among methods and the limited timeframe of typical research projects. We propose that a triangulation research strategy that makes use of mixed methods, or collaborations between researchers across mixed disciplines, can be used to successfully address all three areas simultaneously and show how this has been achieved in the case studies. The framework facilitates interdisciplinary research on farmer behaviour by opening up spaces of structured dialogue on assumptions, research questions and methods employed in investigation.

A Conceptual Model for Group Support Systems in Local Councils

This paper proposes a conceptual model of a context-aware group support system (GSS) to assist local council employees to perform collaborative tasks in conjunction with inter- and intra-organisational stakeholders. Most discussions about e-government focus on the use of ICT to improve the relationship between government and citizen, not on the relationship between government and employees. This paper seeks to expose the unique culture of UK local councils and to show how a GSS could support local government employer and employee needs.

A conceptual model for group support systems in local councils

This paper proposes a conceptual model of a context-aware group support system (GSS) to assist local council employees to perform collaborative tasks in conjunction with inter- and intra-organisational stakeholders. Most discussions about e-government focus on the use of ICT to improve the relationship between government and citizen, not on the relationship between government and employees. This paper seeks to expose the unique culture of UK local councils and to show how a GSS could support local government employer and employee needs.

Local oscillator phase lock under multipath for video deghoster systems

Under multipath conditions, standard Video Intermediate Frequency (VIF) detectors generate a local oscillator phase error and consequently produce a dispersed non-ideal detected video signal due to the presence of additional IF carriers. The dispersed video causes problems when attempting to identify and remove the multipath interference, or ghosts, by the use of Digital Signal Processing and digital filtering. A digital phase lock system is presented which derives the correct phase for synchronous detection in the presence of multipath by using correlation information that has already been calculated as part of the deghosting process. As a result, the video deghoster system is made simpler, faster and more economical.

Distributed fuzzy logic for building management systems using local operating networks

This paper describes the development of an experimental distributed fuzzy control system for heating and ventilation (HVAC) systems within a building. Each local control loop is affected by a number of local variables, as well as information from neighboring controllers. By including this additional information it is hoped that a more equal allocation of resources can be achieved.

Assessing the vulnerability of food crop systems in Africa to climate change

Africa is thought to be the region most vulnerable to the impacts of climate variability and change. Agriculture plays a dominant role in supporting rural livelihoods and economic growth over most of Africa. Three aspects of the vulnerability of food crop systems to climate change in Africa are discussed: the assessment of the sensitivity of crops to variability in climate, the adaptive capacity of farmers, and the role of institutions in adapting to climate change. The magnitude of projected impacts of climate change on food crops in Africa varies widely among different studies. These differences arise from the variety of climate and crop models used, and the different techniques used to match the scale of climate model output to that needed by crop models. Most studies show a negative impact of climate change on crop productivity in Africa. Farmers have proved highly adaptable in the past to short- and long-term variations in climate and in their environment. Key to the ability of farmers to adapt to climate variability and change will be access to relevant knowledge and information. It is important that governments put in place institutional and macro-economic conditions that support and facilitate adaptation and resilience to climate change at local, national and transnational level.

A framework for revitalisation of rural education and training systems in sub-Saharan Africa: Strengthening the human resource base for food security and sustainable livelihoods

Recent studies of the current state of rural education and training (RET) systems in sub-Saharan Africa have assessed their ability to provide for the learning needs essential for more knowledgeable and productive small-scale rural households. These are most necessary if the endemic causes of rural poverty (poor nutrition, lack of sustainable livelihoods, etc.) are to be overcome. A brief historical background and analysis of the major current constraints to improvement in the sector are discussed. Paramount among those factors leading to its present 'malaise' is the lack of a whole-systems perspective and the absence of any coherent policy framework in most countries. There is evidence of some recent innovations, both in the public sector and through the work of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), civil society organisations (CSOs) and other private bodies. These provide hope of a new sense of direction that could lead towards meaningful 'revitalisation' of the sector. A suggested framework offers 10 key steps which, it is argued, could largely be achieved with modest internal resources and very little external support, provided that the necessary leadership and managerial capacities are in place. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Local roles of TGF-beta superfamily members in the control of ovarian follicle development

Members of the transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) superfamily have wide-ranging influences on many tissue and organ systems including the ovary. Two recently discovered TGF-beta superfamily members, growth/differentiation factor-9 (GDF-9) and bone morphogenetic protein-15 (BMP-15; also designated as GDF-9B) are expressed in an oocyte-specific manner from a very early stage and play a key role in promoting follicle growth beyond the primary stage. Follicle growth to the small antral stage does not require gonadotrophins but appears to be driven by local autocrine/paracrine signals from both somatic cell types (granulosa and theca) and from the oocyte. TGF-beta superfamily members expressed by follicular cells and implicated in this phase of follicle development include TGF-beta, activin, GDF-9/9B and several BMPs. Acquisition of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) responsiveness is a pre-requisite for growth beyond the small antral stage and evidence indicates an autocrine role for granulosa-derived activin in promoting granulosa cell proliferation, FSH receptor expression and aromatase activity. Indeed, some of the effects of FSH on granulosa cells may be mediated by endogenous activin. At the same time, activin may act on theca cells to attenuate luteinizing hormone (LH)-dependent androgen production in small to medium-size antral follicles. Dominant follicle selection appears to depend on differential FSH sensitivity amongst a growing cohort of small antral follicles. Activin may contribute to this selection process by sensitizing those follicles with the highest "activin tone" to FSH. Production of inhibin, like oestradiol, increases in selected dominant follicles, in an FSH- and insulin-like growth factor-dependent manner and may exert a paracrine action on theca cells to upregulate LH-induced secretion of androgen, an essential requirement for further oestradiol secretion by the pre-ovulatory follicle. Like activin, BMP-4 and -7 (mostly from theca), and BMP-6 (mostly from oocyte), can enhance oestradiol and inhibin secretion by bovine granulosa cells while suppressing progesterone secretion; this suggests a functional role in delaying follicle luteinization and/or atresia. Follistatin, on the other hand, may favor luteinization and/or atresia by bio-neutralizing intrafollicular activin and BMPs. Activin receptors are expressed by the oocyte and activin may have a further intrafollicular role in the terminal stages of follicle differentiation to promote oocyte maturation and developmental competence. In a reciprocal manner, oocyte-derived GDF-9/9B may act on the surrounding cumulus granulosa cells to attenuate oestradiol output and promote progesterone and hyaluronic acid production, mucification and cumulus expansion.(C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Mapping fibre orientation in complex-shaped biological systems with micrometre resolution by scanning X-ray microdiffraction

A fully automated procedure to extract and to image local fibre orientation in biological tissues from scanning X-ray diffraction is presented. The preferred chitin fibre orientation in the flow sensing system of crickets is determined with high spatial resolution by applying synchrotron radiation based X-ray microbeam diffraction in conjunction with advanced sample sectioning using a UV micro-laser. The data analysis is based on an automated detection of azimuthal diffraction maxima after 2D convolution filtering (smoothing) of the 2D diffraction patterns. Under the assumption of crystallographic fibre symmetry around the morphological fibre axis, the evaluation method allows mapping the three-dimensional orientation of the fibre axes in space. The resulting two-dimensional maps of the local fibre orientations - together with the complex shape of the flow sensing system - may be useful for a better understanding of the mechanical optimization of such tissues.

A relative path attenuation approximation algorithm for DVB-T systems

In the United Kingdom and in fact throughout Europe, the chosen standard for digital terrestrial television is the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) ETN 300 744 also known as Digital Video Broadcasting - Terrestrial (DVB-T). The modulation method under this standard was chosen to be Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (0FD4 because of the apparent inherent capability for withstanding the effects of multipath. Within the DVB-T standard, the addition of pilot tones was included that can be used for many applications such as channel impulse response estimation or local oscillator phase and frequency offset estimation. This paper demonstrates a technique for an estimation of the relative path attenuation of a single multipath signal that can be used as a simple firmware update for a commercial set-top box. This technique can be used to help eliminate the effects of multipath(1).

Sparse kernel density construction using orthogonal forward regression with leave-one-out test score and local regularization

This paper presents an efficient construction algorithm for obtaining sparse kernel density estimates based on a regression approach that directly optimizes model generalization capability. Computational efficiency of the density construction is ensured using an orthogonal forward regression, and the algorithm incrementally minimizes the leave-one-out test score. A local regularization method is incorporated naturally into the density construction process to further enforce sparsity. An additional advantage of the proposed algorithm is that it is fully automatic and the user is not required to specify any criterion to terminate the density construction procedure. This is in contrast to an existing state-of-art kernel density estimation method using the support vector machine (SVM), where the user is required to specify some critical algorithm parameter. Several examples are included to demonstrate the ability of the proposed algorithm to effectively construct a very sparse kernel density estimate with comparable accuracy to that of the full sample optimized Parzen window density estimate. Our experimental results also demonstrate that the proposed algorithm compares favorably with the SVM method, in terms of both test accuracy and sparsity, for constructing kernel density estimates.