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Appropriate biotechnology in small-scale agriculture: how to reorient research and development. Personal Authors: Author Affiliation: Department of Biology and Society, Faculty of Biology, Free University, De Boelelaan, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Editors: Bunders, J. F. G., Broerse, J. E. W. Document Title: Appropriate biotechnology in small-scale agriculture: how to reorient research and development. Abstract: The first chapter (by the editors) outlines the potential of various biotechnology techniques for developing countries, and the gap between need and access to new technology. Tissue culture, improved biological nitrogen fixation, biological control and diagnostics are seen as the most applicable. Part 1 of the book (by the editors and Steen Joffe) is entitled 'Towards criteria for assessment of project proposals' and consists of the following chapters: a case study: yam tissue culture in the Caribbean; guidelines for assessment of project proposals; and practical implications. The guidelines suggested include meeting specific end-user needs, assessing economic, social, environmental and cultural impacts, having government and institutional support, technical feasibility and safety, superiority to existing options, and building indigenous research capacity. Successful projects are characterized by the vision of entrepreneurs and the opportunities that they see, a formal interdisciplinary team of intermediaries to initiate projects which involve scientists from a range of disciplines, networking and team building through informal channels, a carefully designed preparatory phase in which a rough idea is further specified, legitimized and justified, and a prestigious sponsor to give moral support to the idea. Part 2, 'An interactive bottom-up approach in agricultural research' (by the editors and Annelies Stolp), contains the followng chapters: different approaches to technology development for Third World agriculture; implementation strategies for innov

Search About CSDi CSDi is firmly committed to proven, results-based solutions to end suffering and poverty. Our goal is to spread these solutions across the globe through our in-depth field guides and interactive online workshops. Work with us and become the solution. We've trained development professionals... in 103 countries who have developed course projects... impacting over 100,000 people. ~ What our students are saying: I really appreciate the time you have taken to go through correcting assignments.... I am very confident that all your labours are producing lots of learning and stimulation for your students. MATT, IRELAND Facebook Like Box Upcoming Courses ¡Cursos Nuevos en Español! May 17 - July 11 101: From the Ground Up May 17 - July 11 341: Community Based Adaptation to Climate Change May 17 - July 11 Adaptación Basado en la Comunidad-CBA May 17 - July 11 Upcoming Online Development Courses May 2011 Community Based Adaptation: 300 Hands-On Field Activities Donate CSDi, a 501c3, relies on your generous donations for our work, training individuals to be the solution in communities across the globe. News Newsletter: March Newsletter: Project Sustainability: Put the Community in Charge. Field Project of the Month: Rainwater Harvesting: Mexico City Google Translate Translate This Website Powered by Google Tradutor iLearning Experience Student Testimonials International Partnerships Learning Environment Student Field Projects Example Assignment: Kenya Student Countries, Organizations, Project Challenges HANDS-ON FIELD ACTIVITIES FOR COMMUNITY-BASED ADAPTATION Module OL 340: Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change Posted by Tim Magee CSDi is pleased to present a compilation of Community Based Adaptation Field Activities-complete with links to source materials and technical information-compiled from case studies & from projects developed by CSDi field partners & online students. We encourage you to submit activities: Onl

Private-Public Interactions in Agrobiotechnology: Appropriate Roles and Rules of Conduct The Agricultural Knowledge System: Appropriate Roles and Interactions for the Public and Private Sectors N. Kalaitzandonakes Public/Private Alliances G. Rausser Are Research Alliances between State Agricultural Experiment Stations Incompatible with the Original Purpose of these Institutions? D.A. Holt & J.B. Bullock Partnerships between Public and Private: The Experience of the Cooperative Research Center for Plant Science in Australia C. Buller & W. Taylor The Changing Agricultural Research Environment: What Does it Mean for Public-Private Innovation? C. Klotz-Ingram & K. Day-Rubenstein Exploring the Public's Role in Agricultural Biotechnology Research S. Sonka & S. Pueppke Public Science, Biotechnology, and the Industrial Organization of Agrofood Systems S. Wolf & D. Zilberman Balancing Basic, Genetic Enhancement and Cultivar Development Research in an Evolving US Plant Germplasm System G. Traxler Public and Private Collaboration on Plant Biotechnology in China C.E. Pray Biotechnology and Agriculture: A Skeptical Perspective V.W. Ruttan

Intellectual Property Rights And Concentration In Agricultural Biotechnology William Lesser Cornell University AgBioForum Fall98 v.1, n.2 The relationships between intellectual property rights (IPRs) and structural change are examined in this paper. Intellectual property rights are a complex, multifaceted area and one in which corporate strategies are poorly understood. Nevertheless, it is argued here that IPRs can affect firm entry, can make vertical integration in downstream industries more or less necessary, and can create financial incentives for downstream mergers and acquisitions. Hence, IPRs can have significant structural impacts. Key words: intellectual property rights; agrobiotechnology; industry structure; research and development (R&D) The later 1990s have been a tumultuous time for merger and acquisition activity among firms involved in agricultural biotechnology. By the end of the third quarter of 1998, Monsanto alone had been involved in 18 acquisitions and had itself agreed and then reneged on a merger with American Home Products. In addition, Monsanto completed overseas acquisitions worth a total of $7.3 billion over two years. Novartis was formed by the merging of Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy, while DuPont chose to enter the market through joint ventures; a total of 20 joint ventures valued at over $5 billion (Moore, 1998). These mergers have contributed greatly to a restructuring of the seed industry. Most notably, Monsanto controlled up to 40 percent of seed for the 1998 United States (U.S.) soybean crop and, if approved, full acquisition of Delta & Pine Land will give Monsanto ownership of at least 80 percent of the U.S. cotton seed industry (Kilman & Warren, 1998). This is not the only incidence of major acquisition activity, a previous one occurred about 20 years earlier. Butler and Marion (1985) list 27 mergers during the period 1978-80. The 1980 date is pivotal as it marks some strengthening amendments to the United States Plant Variety Prot

Corporate appropriation of genetic resources, development and deployment of transgenic varieties, and the global imposition of intellectual property rights are now widely recognized as moments of accumulation by dispossession. Though robust and globally distributed, opposition to such processes have been largely defensive in orientation, and even accommodationist in demands for the development of market mechanisms for compensating those from whom germplasm is being collected. A more radical stance founded on legal and operational mechanisms drawn from the open-source software movement could not only function to impede processes of dispossession, but might actually facilitate the repossession of 'seed sovereignty'. Implementation of 'biological open-source' arrangements could plausibly undergird the creation of a protected commons populated by farmers and plant breeders whose materials would be freely available and widely exchanged, but would be protected from appropriation by those who would monopolize them.

Hubris and hybrids: a cultural history of technology and science Mikael Hård, Andrew Jamison 0 Resenhas Routledge, 2005 - 335 páginas Human societies have not always taken on new technology in appropriate ways. Innovations are double-edged swords that transform relationships among people, as well as between human societies and the natural world. Only through successful cultural appropriation can we manage to control the hubris that is fundamental to the innovative, enterprising human spirit; and only by becoming hybrids, combining the human and the technological, will we be able to make effective use of our scientific and technological achievements. This broad cultural history of technology and science provides a range of stories and reflections about the past, discussing areas such as film, industrial design, and alternative environmental technologies, and including not only European and North American, but also Asian examples, to help resolve the contradictions of contemporary high-tech civilization. Cover image and detail: Colin Clive, as Dr. Frankenstein, and Dwight Frye, as his assistant Fritz, prepare to bring theirmonster to life in a scene from the 1931 movie version of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." "Highly Recommended" -Choice Magazine

Abstract Lewontin and Levins's contributions are viewed from four angles: a more vigorous culture of science criticism; a visible college of Marxist scientists in the USA; inquiries into the diverse social influences shaping science; and motivating readers who want to pursue their science as a political project. Indirect contributions-influences on and appropriations by other actors in the wider realm of biology as politics-are discussed as well as the more direct effects. Keywords: Dialectics; Marxism; biology; ecology; agriculture; health

Water Policy Vol 12 No 4 pp 543-563 © IWA Publishing 2010 doi:10.2166/wp.2010.042 India's groundwater irrigation boom: can it be sustained? A. Narayanamoorthy Centre for Rural Development, Alagappa University, Karaikudi, 630 003, Tamil Nadu, India. Fax: 91-4565-225202. E-mail: na_narayana@hotmail.com; narayana64@gmail.com ABSTRACT Development of groundwater irrigation (GWI) has been very impressive in India, especially after the introduction of the green revolution. The area under GWI accounts for 62% of the net irrigated area today. Though GWI provides added benefits to farmers, compared to other sources of irrigation, the continuous exploitation of groundwater of late has resulted in a drastic drop in the water table, and led to salinization and quality deterioration in different parts of the country. Since groundwater contributes overwhelmingly to agricultural growth, the unrestrained exploitation of groundwater could hamper the future growth of agriculture. GWI is controlled by many factors, which are dynamic and bound to change along with the agricultural development. Therefore, one needs to understand the factors determining groundwater development in different regions over time to understand the dynamics of groundwater use. Though many studies are available on different aspects of GWI in India, not many studies have looked at the sustainable aspects of GWI, considering the major States of India together. An attempt is made in this paper to study the development as well as the factors determining GWI over time, using state-wide data to suggest appropriate interventions to sustain the use of groundwater. Keywords: Groundwater exploitation; Indian agriculture; Irrigated area; Sustainability

Agriculture has always attracted attention from governments, policy makers & planners. As a globalized industry any policy that has agriculture at its core must also be globalized. This book examines the policy & planning of agriculture, in the wake of the global crisis in capitalism, using this framework to examine the regulatory processes that intersect with agriculture while giving analytical emphasis to the capitalist accumulation process & the institutions of social regulation. Its three main obejectives are: to outline a theoretical framework & approach for analysing developmnents in capitalist agriculture in advanced industrial economices; the explore policy & planning issues & problems emanating from agriculture at the end of the twentieth century; & to review policy & planning processes & practice appropriate to the new structural conditions facing agriculture. The book concludes with an overview of policy & planning processes & addresses the political choices that are revealed as being required

ombining theory, research and policy Consuming Interests provides a topical interdisciplinary exploration into the nature of food provision, policy and regulation. The book provides a detailed examination of corporate retailers, state agencies and consumer organisations involved in the food sector. The analysis explores questions including: * what can the public expect from the state * what limits are there on state action * what are the most appropriate balances between public and private interests in the provision of 'quality' foods.

Innovation and globalization are changing the nature of economic life. This book argues that the transfer and use of knowledge requires the development of appropriate institutional infrastructures. The opportunities offered by globalization will only be fully realized by actively pursuing policies to enhance the absorption and development of knowledge. The book is relevant for courses in management and business, economics, geography, international political economy, and innovation and technology studies. It will be of interest to all concerned with public policy toward the economy

Technology alliances create market development rights that are shared between partners in an alliance relative to codeveloped product technology. Alliance partners will often manage the shared market development rights in a cooperative manner by forming an agreement in which one partner (i.e., the licensor) licenses its market development rights to the other partner in the alliance (i.e., the licensee). The real options and bargaining power literatures provide opposing recommendations regarding whether a licensor creates greater shareholder value by licensing its market development rights to the licensee on a more or less restrictive basis. Empirical analysis of technology alliance contracts reveals that the restrictiveness by which a licensor should license its market development rights to a licensee depends on the licensee's strategic marketing emphasis. Specifically, a licensee will create greater value by following a more restrictive distribution strategy when its partner's marketing strategy emphasizes value creation. Alternatively, a licensee will create greater value when its partner's marketing strategy emphasizes value appropriation by following a less restrictive distribution strategy. From a theoretical perspective, the paper's findings provide early evidence regarding the contribution of marketing strategy toward value creation in technology alliances and help resolve the differing expectations offered by the real options and bargaining power literatures. Managerially, the paper identifies an alliance partner's strategic marketing emphasis as a hitherto unrecognized factor determining when managers should follow a more or less restrictive distribution strategy when licensing marketing development rights within technology alliances

Training Opportunities IAIA recognizes that the training of EIA professionals is a key to effective impact assessments. Through its Training and Professional Development Committee, this section of the IAIA web site will provide members and non-members with information regarding training manuals, training courses, and other aspects of EIA capacity building. IAIA has just begun developing its training network. If you know of information that would make this section more useful, please contact info@iaia.org Training Home UNEP Training Manual Use this link to buy or print a copy of the "Training Resource Manual for Environmental Impact Assessment" (2nd Edition), including Transparencies and Case Studies prepared by the United Nations Environment Program. This 600 page document is a must for any person who is engaged in EIA training. Training Network This link will help EIA professionals use the Internet to find out about training programs and EIA learning resources around the world. Training Course Database Other Manuals and Reports Strategic Environmental Assessment Manual IAIA is pleased to make available, at no cost, the course manual on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), prepared by Maria Rosário Partidário. Dr. Partidário's course on SEA has been the best-attended training session at IAIA's annual meetings for many years, and gets high ratings from attendees for its presentation of SEA current practices, future demands and capacity building needs. International Study of the Effectiveness of Environmental Assessment - Final Report IAIA is pleased to make available, at no cost, the final report on "Environmental assessment in a changing world : evaluating practice to improve performance" prepared by Barry Sadler. The two year international EA effectiveness study, commissioned by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and IAIA and taken forward by an international consortium of countries and international agencies, remains a landmark review of th

THE ECONOMICS OF INNOVATION AND PRODUCTIVITY This research focuses on the development of an integrated framework for understanding the dynamics of the generation, dissemination and exploitation of technological knowledge and its effects on the growth of companies, regions and countries. It involves the use of different methodological designs, ranging from network analysis to econometrics and clinical case studies, to accommodate the variety of issues under scrutiny and to combine theoretical contributions and supporting empirical analyses. It includes several principal research lines: * Knowledge structure and productivity growth * Generation and exploitation of technological change: Market value and total factor productivity * Biased technological change and total factor productivity based on country and regional European evidence. . The topics explored within this line of research include: 1. Microeconomic analysis of the relationships between firm performance and human capital and technological knowledge. 2. Investigation of the relationships between education, scientific and technological knowledge, and regional economic growth. 3. Analysis of country and industry level productivity differentials among the industrialized countries and between industrialized and developing countries. It is hoped that this research will result in an organic heuristic structure that explains the complex and composite nature of the economic transformations in advanced countries. Recent publications Antonelli, C. and Calderini, M., 2008, 'The governance of knowledge compositeness and technological performance: The case of the automotive industry in Europe', Economics of Innovation and New Technology (17) 23-41. Antonelli, C., 2008, 'The new economics of the university: A knowledge governance approach', Journal of Technology Transfer, (33): 1-22. Antonelli, C., 2008, Localized Technological Change. Towards the Economis of Complexity, London: Routledge. Antonelli C. and T

Genetically modified pest-protected plants: science and regulation National Research Council (U.S.). Committee on Genetically Modified Pest-Protected Plants 1 Resenha National Academies Press, 2000 - 263 páginas Farmers praise them, European consumers fear them, and Americans are growing uneasy about them -- transgenic crops have emerged as a contentious issue at the crossroads of health, agriculture, environment, and international trade. This timely book explores the risks and benefits of crops that are genetically modified for pest resistance, the urgency of establishing an appropriate regulatory framework for these products, and the importance of public understanding of the issues. The committee critically reviews federal policies toward transgenic products, the 1986 coordinated framework among the key federal agencies in the field, and rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency for regulation of plant pesticides. Case studies explore the commercial production and oversight of transgenic crops, including "Bt" crops, the most widely used transgenic pest-protected plants. Clearing up misconceptions and offering clear guidance, this book will be immediately important to anyone concerned about the transgenic issue.

The strategies of rent appropriation and industry structure are inter-dependent. How firms use patents depends upon industry structure, and in turn, affects industry structure. In the 19th century, market leaders in the chemical industry combined patents and secrecy to deter entry. Within cartels, patents were used to stabilize cartels and organize technology licensing. The role of patents changed in the less concentrated post World War II markets. In bulk organic chemicals and petrochemicals, chemical producers use licensing as an important means of generating revenue from process innovations. The increased importance of technology licensing is closely related to the emergence of a class of specialized process design and engineering firms that have played an important role in the development and diffusion of process innovations.

Abstract In Varieties of Capitalism; The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Peter A. Hall and David Soskice (H&S) argue that technological specialization patterns are largely determined by the prevailing "variety of capitalism". They hypothesize that "liberal market economies" (LMEs) specialize in radical innovation, while "coordinated market economies" (CMEs) focus more on incremental innovation. Mark Zachary Taylor [Taylor, M.Z., 2004. Empirical evidence against varieties of capitalism's theory of technological innovation. International Organization 58, 601-631.] convincingly argued that Hall and Soskice's empirical test is fundamentally flawed and proposed a more appropriate test of their conjecture. He rejected the varieties of capitalism explanation of innovation patterns. We extend and refine Taylor's analysis, using a broader set of radicality indicators and making industry-level comparisons. Our results indicate that Hall and Soskice's conjecture cannot be upheld as a general rule, but that it survives closer scrutiny for a substantial number of industries and an important dimension of radicality. Article Outline 1. Introduction 2. Innovation in liberal and coordinated market economies 3. Tests based on patent citation indicators 3.1. Indicators of radicality 3.2. Construction of radicality quantiles 3.3. Analytical techniques 4. Data issues 5. Empirical results 5.1. Revealed Comparative Technological Advantages 5.2. Histograms for radicality distributions 5.3. Statistical tests on equality of distributions 6. Conclusions Acknowledgements Appendix A. Appendix References

Starting around 1900, technology became a lively subject for debate among intellectuals, writers, and other opinion leaders. The expansion of the machine into ever more areas of social and economic life had led to a need to interpret its meanings in a more comprehensive way than in the past. World War I and its aftermath shifted the terms of this ongoing debate by underlining both the potential dangers of technology and its centrality to modern life. This book examines the broad range of social and intellectual responses to technology in the first four decades of this century, and suggests that these responses set the terms that continue to govern contemporary debates. Focusing on the broader contexts within which intellectual positions are formed, the book highlights the ways in which attitudes toward technology were shaped in a wide variety of national and organizational settings. A common theme is that, in debating technology, people drew on their distinctive national symbols and cultural traditions. By emphasizing the interplay between debates on technology and the making of modernity, the book challenges standard historical accounts of the early twentieth century. Contributors: Ketil G. Andersen, Aant Elzinga, Tor Halvorsen, Mikael Hard, Kjetil Jakobsen, Andrew Jamison, Catharina Landstrom, Conny Mithander, Sissel Myklebust, Dick van Lente, Peter Wagner.