Over the past century there have been substantial declines in farmland biodiversity as a result of the intensification of agricultural practice. Concerns over these declines have led to the development of agri-environment schemes designed to mitigate the effects of intensive agriculture and to benefit biodiversity. Prior to commencing this thesis it was not clear if flower-rich, pollinator-focu...

The proposed conceptual framework explores how small-scale farms can combine agricultural products and tourism into an eco-innovation strategy. This paper presents a case study conducted on a family-run farm within the territory of the Paiwan tribal community of the North Dawu Mountain situated in the Central Mountain Range of Taiwan. The area has become an important coffee-farming region since...

Sustainability Information Services for Agri-Food Supply Networks – Closing Gaps in Information Infrastructures Several global developments (e.g. diminishing production resources, growing demand for bio-energy) and numerous sector-wide crises (e.g. BSE, swine fever, dioxin) have led to a changing attitude of society towards the consequences of the agri-food system‘s activities for social, econo...

This article analyses interdependencies in the agri-food system; it focuses on relationships between agri-supply and agricultural production markets, based a case study of emergence development an insect market for protection crops tomato sector. It mobilizes sociology agencements, thus making possible to highlight human non-human actors, devices work that link these two markets. From perspecti...

1Département des sciences animales, Faculté des sciences de l’agriculture et de l’alimentation, Université Laval, Sainte-Foy, Québec, Canada G1K 7P4; 2Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Soils and Crops Research and Development Centre, Sainte-Foy, Quebec, Canada G1V 2J3 (e-mail: [email protected]); and 3Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Dairy and Swine Research and Development Centre, Lennoxvi...

The ‘wellness’ phenomenon is now apparent throughout the world and is associated, inter alia, with: the importance of a balanced diet; recognition of the need for regular exercise; the introduction of workplace fitness programs; and the introduction of new (and alternative) approaches to the treatment of medical ailments. What has gone seemingly unnoticed, however, have been the quite profound ...

Executive Summary Soil quality is an account of the soil's ability to provide ecosystem and social services through its capacities to perform its functions under changing conditions (after Tóth et al. 2007.) The concept of soil quality expressed by this definition allows practical applications with regards to targeted social and/or ecosystem services, including agri-environmental services. The ...

First step towards understanding any agricultural system is the comprehension of relationships between the system and numerous physical, chemical and biological factors influencing it. Any decision regarding such systems requires analytical exploration of the involved data. The exploration task is to be supported by an efficient data storage and retrieval mechanism. In this paper we have presen...

a r t i c l e i n f o To address ongoing biodiversity losses, the use of incentive-based nature protection policies is increasingly recommended. In the present paper, we examine how action and result-oriented agricultural policy measures affect the species protection initiatives of real agricultural managers. To do so, we use a computer-based economic experiment involving a multi-period individ...

In Germany, the precautionary principle (PP) is a well-established legal principle in environmental law, especially for regulating agribiotechnology. This article uses the analytical concept of issue-framing to identify different views of the PP and how they have informed changes in the German regulatory arena. In the 1990s Germany’s genetically modified (GM) crop policy was dominated by a disc...