agriculture definition

Common statistically significant levels are 5%, 1% and 0.1% depending on the analysis Statistically significant results  are required for many practical cases of  experimentation  in various branches of research.  The concept of statistical significance can be understood by minimum level at which the null hypothesis can be rejected. This means if the researcher sets the statistical significance level at 5% and the probability that the results are a chance process is 3%, and then the researcher can claim that the null hypothesis can be rejected. In this case, the researcher will call his results to be statistically significant. Lower the significance level, higher the confidence.  The choice of the statistical significance level is influenced by a number of parameters and changes with different experiments.  In most cases of practical consideration, the distribution of parameters or qualities follows a normal distribution. However, care should always be t...

     Several recent posts have focused on agriculture in Africa.  I applaud those posts.      Today, I received an e-mail from the African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development (AJFAND) that publicized its newest issue -- a special issue on biofortification of staple crops for Africa.  I have done some legal work on the issue of biofortification of crops for developing nations.  Hence, this issue caught my attention.  I provide the AJFAND information for your information and use. Drew Kershen ********************************************************************************** From: Hon. Prof. Ruth Oniang'o [mailto:RKOniango@ruraloutreachafrica.org] Sent: 20 April 2017 09:07 Subject: Announcing AJFAND Volume 17 No. 2 (2017) - Special Issue on Biofortification AJFAND Logo Special Issue devoted to Biofortification Finally we are here. Let me right upfront express profound appreciation to Amy Saltzman, a res...

[ Apologia : I realize all agriculture-newsworthy items don�t originate from California, but as I live in the state and our other bloggers are quiescent at the moment, I trust you can forgive me. And yet we might recall that California is � positioned as the agricultural powerhouse of the United States ,� as it �leads all of the other states in farm income!�] � Judge slams fruit grower over �bad faith� bargaining with farmworkers � By Geoffrey Mohan for the Los Angeles Times , April 17, 2017 The state�s largest grower of peaches and other fruit bargained in bad faith with the United Farm Workers of America and wrongly tried to exclude as many as 1,500 employees from a collective bargaining agreement, a judge has ruled. The decision gives a strong boost to the UFW�s claim to represent as many as 6,500 workers at Gerawan Farming Inc., a 12,000-acre farm and packing operation in the San Joaquin Valley that has been the focal point of one of the longest-running and most acrimonious labo...

This series of titles from Zed Books has several volumes directly and indirectly relevant to questions in international political economy and agriculture, should anyone be interested. I have a post with a bit more information over at Ratio Juris . [ Please note: I am not being paid by Zed Books, I did not receive a (or any) free book(s) from the publisher, and I was not asked to promote the series.]

Drying cocoa beans in rural Ghana (Photo: Elke de Buh) �Before you eat that chocolate Easter egg, think about the people who produced it� By Simran Sethi for the Los Angeles Times , April 13, 2017   � Just after Valentine�s Day, prices for cocoa plummeted. Days later, media outlets erupted in a collective hurrah. �Your chocolate is getting cheaper,� headlines proclaimed. �Easter will be sweet.� What wasn�t factored into the celebration is the deep suffering of the subsistence farmers who grow cacao, the seeds of a pod-shaped fruit that, once harvested, become the cocoa traded on the commodities market and destined for the chocolate eggs and bunnies that fill most Easter baskets. Cacao�s origins trace to the rainforests of the upper Amazon, and the seeds are believed to have been transformed into a drink in Mesoamerica at least as early as 400 BC. Once used as medicine, currency and a stand-in for human blood during rituals, today cacao � cocoa � is dried, fermented and roasted to...

I�ve made a fair amount of additions to this bibliography: The Sullied Science & Political Economy of Hyper-Industrial Agriculture (Or: �Toward Agroecology & Food Justice�) . In a future post at the Agricultural Law blog I aim to provide an introduction to agroecology , providing several definitions as well as references (online and otherwise) to some of the best (assessed by m y lights) literature on the subject. At its best, agroecology is in part utopian ( in a non-pejorative sense ) insofar as it embraces concerns with �food sovereignty� and �food justice� (and social justice generally) while attempting to transform�or at least enlist�contemporary science and technology into�or on behalf of�emancipatory tools for �the people,� that is, something intrinsically tied to (participatory and representative) democratic principles, values, and practices no longer deformed, distorted, or trumped by capitalist imperatives . (If one cannot imagine agriculture �beyond capitalism � ag...

In the hope of arousing abiding interest among those who�ve yet to read this work, what follows is from the informative if not provocative Foreword by James C. Scott to Bill Winders � The Politics of Food Supply: U.S. Agricultural Policy in the World Economy (Yale University Press, 2009): �The task Bill Winders sets himself is sharply etched but, at the same time, dauntingly ambitious. How can one account for the demise of the trinity of production controls, price supports, and export subsidies that guided agricultural policy in the United States for more than a half century from the New Deal to the mid-1990s? The bookends of this enterprise are Franklin Roosevelt�s Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA, 1933), which instituted supply management, and the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act (FAIR Act, 1996), which abandoned it. Explaining this convincingly, as Winder does, requires a high order of interdisciplinary skills, including a firm grasp of partisan congressional politic...

Perhaps some readers of this blog may be interested in a �suggested reading� list on the moral and political economy of poverty, hunger, and famine , cross-posted at Ratio Juris & Religious Left Law.