Agricultural Recognition Research Articles

The End of the Farm? Thomas Hardy’s Agricultural Vision

In his depictions of rural life in semi-fictional Wessex, Thomas Hardy has sometimes been charged with romanticising rural life and portraying the pastoral instead of the real. His characters frequently inhabit agricultural communities, which form the basis of their lives and livelihoods. In tension with the pastoral, romanticised village is the recognition of agriculture as a capitalist venture: Hardy’s writings capture the end of the old sense of land as a natural relative and the shift to land as an exploitable resource. With the industrialisation of agriculture in the late nineteenth century, the scale on which farming took place increased, both in the working of the land and in the raising of domesticated animals for consumption. This essay will attempt to mobilize a reading of Hardy’s agricultural vision in the context of changes to farming that have contributed to the current ecological crisis, with the goal of defamiliarizing the familiar concept of the farm by way of the alterity of the present – a present that has been in development for over 150 years. Hardy’s writings offer a dual perspective of the farm. Through one end of the telescope appears the sheep-shearing barn of Far from the Madding Crowd, a symbol of the farm’s enduring power as an entity transcending politics and religion, as steadfast as the human need for sustenance that drives an ongoing relationship with the soil, an image that feels familiar, close. Flip that telescope around, and one sees the weather-beaten barn that Jude climbs as a useful vantage point to look toward Christminster, an infinite distance between him and the farmland around him. Between these two barns, Hardy’s fiction depicts a moving picture of the emerging mismatch of functional scale between human and machine, the mechanisation of human and animal bodies – and the rendering of the landscape as an industrial resource and product – that launched a fundamental shift in what one might think of as the farm.

Toward carbon neutrality before 2060: Trajectory and technical mitigation potential of non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions from Chinese agriculture

In 2020, China announced that it aims to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Despite the recognition of agriculture's importance in emission mitigation strategies, assessing the non-CO2 greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation potentials from this sector remains technically and conceptually challenging. This study developed a bottom-up inventory-based model (the Agriculture-induced non-CO2GreenHouse Gases INVentory model) to provide region-specific long-term projections (to 2060) of non-CO2 GHG emissions (including methane and nitrous oxide) from the Chinese agricultural sector. Seventeen production-side technologies were identified that could reduce on-farm emissions, and their mitigation potentials by 2060 were evaluated. Results showed that agricultural non-CO2 GHG emissions rose by 34% from 1980 to 2018, and they are projected to increase further by 33% to reach 1153 MtCO2-eq yr−1 by 2060. Implementing selected technological adaptations could lead to peak agricultural emissions before 2030 and then reduce them by 32%–50% by 2060. The most effective mitigation measures include feed supplements, feed quality improvements, slow-release fertilizers, and improved water management for paddy fields and uplands. All six regions of China will see a gradual increase in agricultural emissions. South Central China and Southwest China have the largest shares of total national emissions and the greatest mitigation potentials. However, technology adoption faces a series of socio-economic obstacles such as the high cost of technology promotion, smaller farm sizes, farmers' aversion to risk, and a complex set of objectives for agriculture.

New League for the Indian Agriculture - Advent of Intellectual Property Rights

With the advent of the new knowledge economy, the old and some of the existing management constructs and approaches would have to change. Intellectual property rights (IPR) have become important in the face of changing trade environment which is characterized by the following features namely global competition, high innovation risks, short product cycle, need for rapid changes in technology, high investments in research and development (R&D), production and marketing and need for highly skilled human resources. Agriculture is a way of life, a tradition, which, for centuries, has shaped the thought, the outlook, the culture and economic life of the people of India. The importance of the agricultural sector as a source of food, incomes, employment and often foreign exchange cannot be overstated. As much as good health, a productive and sustainable agricultural sector is critical to achieving economic growth and poverty reduction. The recognition of agriculture as a rule-bound enterprise of investment and profit making became obvious with its inclusion in the intergovernmental negotiations for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) for the first time in the Uruguay Round (1986-1994). This round led to the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in January 1995. Now, the WTO has at least half a dozen intergovernmental agreements that directly affect agriculture. These are Agreements on Agriculture (AoA), Applications of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS), Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), Anti-Dumping, Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, Safeguards, and Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs).

Accounting For Agricultural Products: US Versus IFRS GAAP

Currently there is a mix of accounting guidance for agriculture producers in the US that is both GAAP including Accounting Statement Codification 905 and non-GAAP financial guidelines. Should the US adopt International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), this guidance would be replaced with International Accounting Standard (IAS) 41 Agriculture. This study identifies systematic differences between the US and International accounting and reporting for agricultural assets and products. The study also finds that international and US agricultural accounting recognition and reporting guidance result in dissimilar reporting due to guidance interpretation. Valuation variances and definition differences including the requirement to change the agricultural asset recognition method from historical cost to fair value continue to be the basis of major reporting differences. Current US guidance on recognizing and reporting agricultural assets is more conservative than the international guidance. Overall, the US agricultural recognition and reporting guidance contains less information and is therefore less beneficial to financial statement users.

Insect Life: Invasion of the Red Imported Fire Ant (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

The red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta Buren, hereafter referred to as the imported fire ant , has received much press coverage since its introduction into the United States approximately 75 years ago. This is not because Qf its fascinating biology, which I will cover, but to the fear and frustration of citizens who have come in contact with this insect. The news media have recognized the public's frustration and, while providing important information, have tended to exaggerate and fan the fires of frustration and fear. Following the United States Department of Agriculture's recognition that imported fire ants were a problem in 1950, many newspaper headlines have appeared that have given the impression that not only are these ants dangerous, they are marching across the South and will soon invade your area. Some of the more sensational ones include, “Possibly lethal hordes of fire ants plague sadden Texas areas” (Washington Post , 30 October 1981); “But insects ‘are winning’: officials fighting to check fire ants march through Texas” (Los Angeles Times , 5 December 1981); “War on fire ants still suffers stinging losses” (Chicago Tribune , 13 June 1982); and “Woman puts up tough fight before dying from fire ant stings” (Houston Chronicle , 23 November 1990). Further, pictures like the cover of The Magazine of San Antonio (May 1980) taken from a poster advertising the movie Empire of the Ants (American International Pictures 1977) or the paperback book, The Fire Ants (Wernick 1976) suggest these ants are at least the size of a squirrel, not unlike the ants featured in the movie Them (Warner Brothers 1954). The ants are the subject of many magazine articles (Michel 1984, Glass-Godwin 1992, Killion and Vinson 1995). Imported fire ants also have received magazine cover status in such publications as Smithsonian (July 1990) and Texas Monthly Magazine (August 1988). They even have entered our popular culture as indicated by their inclusion in several cartoons such as Bloom County (Breathed 1981) or Mother Goose and Grimm (Peter 1989). However, the cover of Texas Monthly Magazine probably stated best what most people in the infested region consider this creature, (i.e., “Public Enemy Number One”). But, is this designation deserved? To examine this question I first will cover the fire ant's biology and then some of the problems.