Importance Of Grains Research Articles

A mathematical programming model to consider alternative crops

Japan's increased import of grain in the last decades has brought about the need for Japanese farmers to convert from rice production to other crops in which they are unexperienced. This paper presents a model and analyses to find effective means for inducing the farmers to convert in an acceptable way. The model is composed of several subproblems to represent different interest groups. The farmer's subproblems are to maximise their revenues whereas the government subproblem is to save expenditure in attaining the conversion. These subproblems are coordinated from a holistic point of view by a coordination subproblem of goal programming on equity among farms and on the soundness of government budget. Part of computation was carried out interactively with the participation of experts.

Cities and Economic Development: From the Dawn of History to the Present by Paul Bairoch

Book Reviews Cities and Economic Development: From the Dawn of History to the Present. By Paul Bairoch. Translated by Christopher Braider. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Pp. xxii + 574; tables, references, appendix, bibliography, index. $49.95. The sweep of this book in both time and geographical space, the voluminous encyclopedic detail, the steady stream of citations drawn from the pertinent literature of the past thirty years, and the meticulous attention to questions of method and accuracy confront the reviewer with the impossible task of trying to reduce the work to a short critical account suitable for a learned journal. Paul Bairoch is the director of the Center for Economic History at the University of Geneva, author of a number of studies on the interrelations of urban and economic history, and a master of all the pertinent literature on the subject of recent years. I will try to digest the empirical and thematic content as briefly as f can manage, and offer at the same time an evaluation of the whole achievement. If there is a primary concept that is central to the work as a whole, it is the necessary relation between agricultural production and urbanization (in essence the establishment, growth, and spread of cities), the latter impossible without the former and both interdepen­ dent in the subsequent evolution of urban and economic develop­ ment. It is refreshing to find an author, in an age of increasingly vacuous clichés, who restricts the use of the word “revolution” to only four events in the history of civilization—namely, the Neolithic agri­ cultural revolution, the establishment of the first true cities in Sumer during the fourth millennium b.c., the drastic break with the past that came at the beginning of the 16th century, and the agriculturalindustrial revolution that originated in England in the 18th century and quickly spread to the nations of the “developed” world, those in Europe and North America, and eventually Japan. The author’s cen­ tral concern throughout is the complex interaction between economic development in all its aspects and the growth of an urban culture, which is never a simple cause-and-effect relation but an intricate set of mutual influences and reactions. Bairoch’s precise characterization of this relationship rests on a theory of the establishment of cities according to number, population, and function. He describes the founding and evolution of six funcPermission to reprint a book review in this section may be obtained only from the reviewer. 295 296 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE tional distinctions among fundamental urban types: (1) small towns characterized by strictly local, internal functions; (2) regional centers in which functions are broadened beyond the immediately adjacent and largely agricultural activities; (3) commercial cities defined by mercantile, trading, and banking operations, originally marked largely by textile manufacture but later expanding into a broad spectrum of productive activities; (4) administrative cities, ordinarily royal capitals or their equivalent in political institutions; and (5) ecclesiastical cities, where functions of religious institutions might extend from those of a small community on a pilgrimage route to Rome itself. A special category that may cut across all the functional distinctions is the primate city, which may be most easily described as a controlling capital that encompasses all functional concerns. Impe­ rial Rome is the foremost example. The geographical scope of Cities and Economic Development is literally worldwide. The first phase of urbanization occurred in the Fertile Crescent and immediately adjacent lands, followed by the early cities of Asia and Africa, then by the civilization of classical antiquity where the emphasis is on Athens, Rome, and later Constantinople. Bairoch describes Rome as the first genuine metropolis and a “parasitic capital” by virtue of the fact that the imperial administration had to import grain from the productive lands of the empire to feed the city’s largely unproductive population. The collapse of the Roman Empire in the West opened the area to the founding of new cities, which by the 11th century began a vigorous growth through the renewal of trade and the establishment of a money and mercantile economy. This growth continued up to the cataclysm of the Black Plague of 1348, then resumed with a...

Quantifying and Valuing the Joint Production of Grain and Fodder from Maize Fields: Evidence from Northern Pakistan

SUMMARYSimple methods are proposed for measuring the relative importance of grain and fodder produced jointly from maize fields in four zones in northern Pakistan. These methods suggest that the joint production of grain and fodder from maize is important in all four zones and that fodder accounts for between one-third and one-half of the total value of the crop. The relative value of fodder production is particularly high in two of the zones (the irrigated mid-altitude Swat Valley and the rainfed low altitude Islamabad District), both characterized by a high ratio of animal numbers:maize area. The results suggest that maize research and extension recommendations that do not take into consideration the fact that farmers produce maize for fodder as well as grain will often not be accepted by farmers.

Applications of grain‐pivoting and sliding analyses to selective entrapment of gravel and to flow‐competence evaluations

ABSTRACTModels of sediment threshold by grain pivoting or sliding over underlying particles are examined in order to explore their application to evaluations of selective entrainment of gravel by flowing water. Of special interest is whether such process‐based models provide satisfactory evaluations of flow competence and the movement of large clasts by floods. A detailed derivation is undertaken, focusing first on the fluid flow and forces at the particle level. The resulting threshold equation for the particle‐level velocity is then modified to yield the mean entrainment stress for the flow as a whole. This approach is appropriate for considerations of selective entrainment of grains of varying sizes within a deposit, the sorting being due to their relative projection distances above the bed and the dependence of their pivoting angles on grain size and shape. The resulting threshold equations contain a number of coefficients (e.g. drag and lift) whose values are poorly known, but can be constrained by requiring agreement with the Shields curve for the threshold of grains in uniform deposits. If pivoting coefficients based on laboratory measurements with tetrahedral arrangements of particles are used in the models, smaller degrees of selective sorting are predicted than found in the field measurements of gravel entrainment. However, if reasonable modifications of those coefficients are made for expected field conditions, then the models yield good agreement with the data. Sliding models, where sorting is due entirely to projection distances of the grains above the bed, yield somewhat poorer agreement with the field data; however, the sliding models may have support from laboratory experiments on gravel entrainment in that the data and theoretical curves have similar concave trends. The existing measurements lack documentation of the mechanisms of grain movement, so it is not possible to conclusively determine the relative importance of grain pivoting versus sliding. In spite of such uncertainties, the results are encouraging and it is concluded that pivoting and sliding models for grain entrainment do have potential for field computations of selective entrainment and flow competence.

A model of import demand for grain in the Soviet Union

During the 1970s, the Soviet Union moved from being a net exporter to a net importer of grain. Conventional market models are inappropriate for the analysis of this import demand, since trade in a centrally planned economy is administratively determined rather than being a market activity. This article develops a model of import demand for grain in the Soviet Union, based on Soviet perceptions of the purposes and processes of foreign trade. Behavioural aspects of import demand are emphasized in developing the model, and while it may be of some use in forecasting import demand, its prime purpose is explanatory.

Forecasting USSR grain imports

During the 1970s the USSR became the world's largest importer of grains and, thus, a key factor in international grain markets. Many studies have attributed this growth of imports to government policy decisions in 1971 to improve food consumption and to preserve livestock inventories, and have excluded economic factors. This article presents data and analytical evidence which do not support such assumptions. It is proposed that the increases in the USSR's grain imports are due almost entirely to particular economic factors which have greately favoured the USSR since the early 1970s; that the effective implementation of the 1971 policy decisions has depended on these circumstances; and that these economic factors will determine USSR grain imports in the future, as they have done in the past.

Grain Procurement and Distribution in China's Rural Areas: Post-Mao Policies and Problems

It is a reasonable proposition that in any society, the importance of a subject is directly proportional to the scope and complexity of the terminology centered on it. If this is correct, then by this criterion the most important subject in the People's Republic of China (PRC) must be grain. A large grain-centered nomenclature has evolved, most of it after 1949, reflecting not only the importance of grain to the Chinese people since time immemorial, but also the new socialist reality of collective grain production and state control of grain procurement and distribution. While China's agricultural production including grain production has been the subject of many western studies, its grain procurement and distribution, particularly in the post-Mao period, has received relatively little attention.' The purpose of this article is to examine, through this

The Soviet‐American Grain Agreement and the National Interest

AbstractIn the 1970s the Soviet Union became a major importer of grain, giving rise to fears that it could extract an undue share of the gains from East‐West trade through the monopsonistic power of its state‐trading organs and by keeping its buying intentions secret. Offer curves depicting Soviet trade are constructed using two alternative characterizations of Soviet trade decision making. We show that the grain agreement between the two countries negates most of the bargaining advantage attributed to the Soviet trade monopoly and may open the Soviet Union to exploitation by the United States.

Bar resistance in gravel bed streams at bankfull stage

Total flow resistance in gravel bed streams with high width/depth ratios and low sinuosities is primarily a result of grain and bar roughnesses. The relative importance of these two roughness elements has not been established. The relative importance of grain and bar resistance is examined for 12 straight and divided gravel bed reaches at bankfull stage by using the Keulegan equation to determine a resistance division of energy slope. The remaining slope is assumed to represent the relative importance of bar resistance. Bar resistance accounts for 50 to 75% of the total resistance in these reaches. Calculated values of reach‐averaged bar slope correlate closely with field measurements of bar magnitude.

Soviet Grain and Wheat Import Demands in 1981–85

Soviet imports of grain, including wheat, have become large in recent years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has estimated that the Soviet Union imported 35 million tons of grain in the consumption year ending 30 June 1981.1 These imports will continue to be large in the near future because of the Soviet decision to increase the production and consumption of meat and dairy products without slaughtering livestock in years of harvest failure.

Economic planning of Eastern Europe and the USSR — the role of agriculture

Because of the large recent fluctuations in Soviet agricultural output, and rising consumer expectations and demand for food in East European nations, the latest five-year plans of these countries are showing an increase in the importance attached to agriculture and the food industry. The article examines the state of agriculture in the CMEA (Council for Mutual Economic Aid) countries and the probable effects of the plans on production and consumption. It appears that East European imports of grain are signs of prosperity rather than of gross inefficiency. The article indicates that grain production, and with it the trade balances, will improve significantly.

The Irish grain trade, 1839-48

As a step towards a fuller understanding of the food situation in Ireland on the eve of and during the great famine it is necessary to analyse the exports and imports of grain and grain products in those years.There are a number of major obstacles to doing this. To begin with the available statistics on the Irish grain trade are neither orderly nor complete. The most extensive of the relevant series covers each calendar year during the period 1839–48. Monthly figures are available only for the year 1846 and apply to exports only. Other official returns refer to isolated periods of varying length.

Vanha maataloutemme: Maatalous ja maatalousväestö Suomessa perinnäisen maatalouden loppukaudella 1720-luvulta 1870-luvulle

The present study deals with the last continuous period of traditional farming in Finland, where old-type farming ended only in the 1870’s. Farm economy of the period in question was to a large degree based on self-sufficiency which involved many-sided and varied farm activities. At the same time crop husbandry was heavily predominant since the production of bread grain was of foremost importance. Characteristic of the crop husbandry was the use of varied and greatly differing farming methods. Technical development in this sector, as in all farm agriculture, was at the time minimal, and production could be increased only by extending the area under cultivation. The approximately six-fold population increase in Finland between the 1720’s and the 1870’s necessitated a rapid expansion in the area of cultivated land. In the 18th century the production of bread grain seems to have grown at about the same rate as the increase in population, but in the 19th century agricultural production began to lag behind to an increasing degree. The present study attempts to examine the factors that led to this development and to pay special attention to the structure of agricultural farming. Many different factors contributed to the slowing down grain production. The chief factor was the decline in the 19th century of the method of farming based on the bum-beating which had formed the basis of crop husbandry in eastern Finland in the previous century. As a joint result of various factors Finland became in the 19th century a country that had an underproduction of grain, the deficiency was covered by grain bought from Russia. The import of grain was made possible by the increased sales of livestock and forestry products. Independent fanners could cope with this changed state of affairs relatively well, but the landless population, in particular the casual farm workers, was faced with a difficult situation owing to the reduced possibilities of work. By the end of period the landless population already formed a large agricultural proletariat which developed into a heavy burden on the entire economic life of Finland for a long time to come and in fact right until the era of modern agriculture.

The Oven in Popular Metaphor from Hosea to the Present Day

The reasons for its continual usage are not hard to find. It is a metaphor that has its origins deep in the human psyche and in the culture of primitive communities. Many psychologists have observed that cooking is frequently equated with the process of pregnancy and birth, and that the womb is the stove inside which the child is baked. The ancient gods such as Zeus were conceived of as millers and their consorts as mills; the human race was the product they ground and baked, and on a terrestrial scale, man and woman performed similar functions.2 An awareness of the significance of the metaphor accounts for the importance of grain in certain rituals in ancient Greece and Rome. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Greek historian and teacher who spent twenty-two years in Augustan Rome studying its language, customs, and history, observed:

The Food Potential of Developing Nations

tural production in the United States up to that time was inadequate to keep up with the projected demands for food and a better diet to be generated by high birth rates and rapid economic growth. Within a few years, the Fifth Plate thesis had been discarded. Surpluses rather than shortages became the national concern. The threat to the American diet subsided as farm output rose more rapidly under the thrust of postwar technology and the rate of population growth and demand for food began to slow. Now we are considering the elements of population and food in the wider context of the less-developed world and the higher stakes of a potential world food shortage. As background, I will review briefly the historical experience in the population-food race, treating the less-developed free nations as a group but keeping in mind the American experience that the past is not always the key to the future. Then I will move on to considering as a case study the potential of India for feeding its own in the future. This seems fair enough, since India has one-third of the population in the less-developed free world, a high population growth rate representative of most LDC's, a diet among the poorest (roughly 10 percent below the minimum energy standard), and a disappointing food production record in recent years which required massive imports of grain under P.L. 480. Much of the food-crisis syndrome hangs on India. Most other countries are conceded a better chance. If India can make it, the world food problem will at worst be quite manageable. The Historical Experience of the LDC's The FAO measurements of population and food-output trends during the period 1953-1963 are shown in Table 1. Taking the whole 10-year period, food output in the LDC's (excluding communist Asia) rose faster than population. In fact, food output rose faster than in the developed countries (3.0 percent per year compared with 2.4 percent). Even with a high rate of population growth (2.3 percent in the LDC's compared with 1.3 percent for the developed countries), food production per capita

Studies on Egg Yolk Pigmentation: 3. The Effect of Origin and Storage Conditions of Yellow Corn on the Utilization of its Xanthophyll

VARIOUS yellow corn inbreds contain different levels of xanthophyll (class term, for oxygen-containing carotenoids), as well as different ratios between the various carotenoids making up their total xanthophyll (Quackenbush et al., 1961, 1963; Blessin et al., 1963). Not much is known of the relative pigmenting properties of these carotenoids nor of the pigmenting efficiency of various strains of yellow corn possessing different carotenoid patterns.Much of the corn used in feed channels has been stored for one year or more, especially in countries depending on the import of grains. Such storage can cause considerable losses of the carotenoid pigments (Quackenbush, 1963). There is a lack of information on how such storage may influence the availability of the remaining xanthophyll for pigmentation purposes.The quantities of free fatty acids (FFA) in diets containing supplementary fats tend to increase markedly during storage, but no deleterious effects due to such diets have been …

Foreign Supply and Demand Projections: Outlook for U.S. Agricultural Exports

S recently as a year ago, a major emphasis of the export policy of the United States Department of Agriculture was the disposal of agricultural surpluses. The effort was directed toward the development of new markets for products in excess supply. Large stocks of some commodities were in storage and we were looking for markets wherever they could be found. However, concern over surpluses has been replaced by a concern over shortages. The recent drought in India, the continued large imports of grain by the Communist countries, and the reduction of U.S. grain stocks have brought the world food problem into the headlines. The USDA has recently taken actions to increase the production of grain in the United States. Some people are asking the question: In the future, will there be sufficient food to supply the rapidly expanding population at acceptable levels of nutrition? Many projections have been made of the expanding food import needs of the less-developed countries and the magnitude of their food deficits. In fact, I have given several papers on this subject in the past year [1]. However, this emphasis on need gives only a partial picture of trade. To project world trade, food needs must be translated into effective import demand and countered with effective supplies from exporting countries. In addition, concern about the food needs of the deficit countries sometimes conveys the idea that the gap must be filled largely from U.S. output. This paper, although recognizing the problem of inadequate diets in the less-developed nations, treats the total agricultural export picture of the United States. It makes realistic projections to 1970 of the level of U.S. exports of major commodities to both the commercial and the concessional markets, based upon an evaluation of the total foreign demand and supply situation which will probably exist at that time. Although the emphasis on food needs is important, the development of the commercial market is also important. The eventual goal of world trade-including the goal of the Food for Freedom legislation now being considered by Congress-is the expansion of agricultural trade on a commercial basis. In the Department of Agriculture, we have been analyzing the food sit-

Glacial Meltwater Resources in China

IT is claimed that the average amount of glacial meltwater in the rivers of Central Asia is as high as thirty to forty per ce t, although so hydrologists, including V. L. Shul'ts, believe that glaciers contribute only ten per cent to the stream flow. Artificial methods for increasing this contribution have been known for many cen? turies. The inhabitants of mountainous Tadzhikistan, for instance, have for long scattered earth and ashes over snow in order to quicken melting, and this method is described in the accounts of the campaigns of Alexander the Great (Avsyuk, 1963). Owing to the contemporary importance of the development of Russia's eastern territories, economically necessary to provide agricultural produce and extend industry's areal base and, as the Sino-Soviet rift deepens, strategically necessary because of the increasing power of China, extensive research into the utilization of glacial resources has been carried on in the Soviet Union, especially during the 1950's and early 6o's. Since 1959 similar experiments on a semi-commercial scale have been undertaken in China, in an attempt to provide something of a successful counterpart to Khrushchev's Virgin Lands. China has an estimated 44,000 square kilometres of glacial and perennial snowcovered areas. With a total water reserve of 240,000 million cubic metres, these areas account for one-third of the glacial areas in the temperate and tropical zones of the world (NCNA, Lanchow). In view of these vital statistics, and as half of China's glacial area is situated in the arid expanses of north-west China (a region which has constantly provided a challenge to settlement in times of strong central government and especially today, when China has a population of 750 million expanding at a rate of about 15 million a year) (Freeberne, 1964), the Government attaches a priority to the research into and development of glacial meltwater resources. Glaciers in the Kilien and Tienshan Mountains feed most of the rivers of north? west China, and account for as much as fifty to seventy per cent of the stream flow of some of the rivers (NCNA, Lanchow). The Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region is the scene of the most intensive Chinese efforts in the utilization of glacial melt? water. Whereas Sinkiang enjoys a sunny climate with a long frost-free period, it suffers from extreme aridity. * Annual rainfall averages 60 mm. while evaporation rises as high as 2000 mm. a year. In some parts the raindrops often evaporate before they touch the ground' (Peking Rev., 1963). Water supply from the melting snows during summer is critical, therefore, to the success of agriculture which is on a limited, though expanding scale. Before 1949 the area of cultivated land in Sinkiang was as little as 18 million mow,1 and it was necessary to import grain. Although the popula? tion has more than doubled since 1949,3 the region is now self-sufficient in food grain. * This phenomenal change was made possible mainly by enlarging and rationalizing the supply of water' (Peking Rev., 1963). The utilization of glacial meltwater is but one element in a complex which has included the diversion of rivers, and the construction of over 200 reservoirs, as well as canals and irrigation ditches, together making possible an extension of cultivable land to cover an area of more than 46 mil? lion mow.

Solon's ‘Price-Equalisation’

In his article entitled ‘Solon and the Megarian Question’ (JHSlxxvii) Mr A. French has given a valuable exposition of Solon's economic reforms in their relation to the strategic necessities of Athenian overseas trade. This, however, leads him to an assessment of the statesman's policy which it is rather difficult to accept, conflicting as it does both with tradition and the general probabilities of the situation. Further, it is partly based on an interpretation of a passage in Plutarch which is, I think, mistaken and indeed impossible, although it has been adopted by most authorities. Mr French's argument may be summarised as follows:(1) In the pre-Solonian era the sea route to South Attica and Phaleron, still more to Mounychia, was dominated by a hostile Megara owing to her control of Salamis; hence only the ports of East Attica were available for overseas trade in bulk cargoes. Early imports of grain and timber would have been from Thessaly, for which these ports were particularly convenient.(2) However, increasing population and the decline in soil fertility made it desirable to import wheat in large quantities from the Black Sea; this would necessitate delivery at a port nearer the city and therefore control of Salamis to prevent Megarian interference on top of the other considerable hazards of the Black Sea voyage. It would also necessitate a high price which, though in accordance with the internal agricultural conditions, would diminish the advantages of the additional external supplies to the impoverished population of Attica. The Athenian government must either embark on a naval programme, and fight Megara for Salamis, or use less grain, which meant limiting the population.