Confronting the coffee crisis Bacon, Christopher M
2008, 20080118, 2008-03-04, 2008-01-18, 20080101, 20080201, Volume:
1
eBook, Book, Book Chapter
Combining interdisciplinary research with case study analysis at scales ranging from the local to the global, Confronting the Coffee Crisis reveals the promise and the perils of efforts to create a ...more sustainable coffee industry
Our morning cups of coffee connect us to a global industry and an export crisis in the tropics that is destroying livelihoods, undermining the cohesion of families and communities, and threatening ecosystems. Confronting the Coffee Crisis explores small-scale farming, the political economy of the global coffee industry, and initiatives that claim to promote more sustainable rural development in coffee-producing communities. Contributors review the historical, political, economic, and agroecological processes within today's coffee industry and analyze the severely depressed export market that faces small-scale growers in Mexico and Central America.
The book presents a series of interdisciplinary, empirically rich case studies showing how small-scale farmers manage ecosystems and organize collectively as they seek useful collaborations with international NGOs and coffee companies to create opportunities for themselves in the coffee market. The findings demonstrate the interconnections among farmer livelihoods, biodiversity, conservation, and changing coffee markets. Additional chapters examine alternative trade practices, certification, and eco-labeling, discussing the politics and market growth of organic, shade-grown, and Fair Trade coffees. Combining interdisciplinary research with case-study analysis at scales ranging from the local to the global, Confronting the Coffee Crisis reveals the promise and the perils of efforts to create a more sustainable coffee industry.
Contributors
Christopher M. Bacon, David B. Bray, Sasha Courville, Jonathan A. Fox, Stephen R. Gliessman, David Goodman, Carlos Guadarrama-Zugasti, Shayna Harris, Roberta Jaffe, Maria Elena Martinez-Torres, V. Ernesto Mendez, Ellen Contreras Murphy, Tad Mutersbaugh, Seth Petchers, Jose Luis Plaza-Sanchez, Laura Trujillo, Silke Mason Westphal
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has severely impacted the meat processing industry in the United States. We sought to detail demographics and outcomes of severe acute respiratory syndrome ...coronavirus 2 infections among workers in Nebraska meat processing facilities and determine the effects of initiating universal mask policies and installing physical barriers at 13 meat processing facilities. During April 1-July 31, 2020, COVID-19 was diagnosed in 5,002 Nebraska meat processing workers (attack rate 19%). After initiating both universal masking and physical barrier interventions, 8/13 facilities showed a statistically significant reduction in COVID-19 incidence in <10 days. Characteristics and incidence of confirmed cases aligned with many nationwide trends becoming apparent during this pandemic: specifically, high attack rates among meat processing industry workers, disproportionately high risk of adverse outcomes among ethnic and racial minority groups and men, and effectiveness of using multiple prevention and control interventions to reduce disease transmission.
Cheap meat Gewertz, Deborah; Errington, Frederick
2010., 20100109, 2010, 2010-02-08, 20100101
eBook, Book
Cheap Meat follows the controversial trade in inexpensive fatty cuts of lamb or mutton, called “flaps,” from the farms of New Zealand and Australia to their primary markets in the Pacific islands of ...Papua New Guinea, Tonga, and Fiji. Deborah Gewertz and Frederick Errington address the evolution of the meat trade itself along with the changing practices of exchange in Papua New Guinea. They show that flaps—which are taken from the animals’ bellies and are often 50 percent fat—are not mere market transactions but evidence of the social nature of nutrition policies, illustrating and reinforcing Pacific Islanders’ presumed second-class status relative to the white populations of Australia and New Zealand.
"The oil and gas industry is going through a major technological shift. This is particularly true of the Norwegian continental shelf where new work processes are being implemented based on digital ...infrastructure and information technology. The term Integrated Operations (IO) has been applied to this set of new processes. It is defined by the Centre for Integrated Operations in the Petroleum Industry as 'work processes and technology to make smarter decisions and better execution, enabled by ubiquitous real time data, collaborative techniques and access to multiple expertise'"--Provided by publisher.
This volume explores institutional change and performance in the resource-rich Andean countries during the last resource boom and in the early post-boom years. The latest global commodity boom has ...profoundly marked the face of the resource-rich Andean region, significantly contributing to economic growth and notable reductions of poverty and income inequality. The boom also constituted a period of important institutional change, with these new institutions sharing the potential of preventing or mitigating the maladies extractive economies tend to suffer from, generally denominated as the “resource curse”. This volume explores these institutional changes in the Andean region to identify the factors that have shaped their emergence and to assess their performance. The interdisciplinary and comparative perspective of the chapters in this book provide fine-grained analyses of different new institutions introduced in the Andean countries and discusses their findings in the light of the resource curse approach. They argue that institutional change and performance depend upon a much larger set of factors than those generally identified by the resource curse literature. Different, domestic and external, economic, political and cultural factors such as ideological positions of decision-makers, international pressure or informal practices have shaped institutional dynamics in the region. Altogether, these findings emphasize the importance of nuanced and contextualized analysis to better understand institutional dynamics in the context of extractive economies. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the extractive industries, natural resource management, political economics, Latin American studies and sustainable development.
At its heart this book is about innovation and the innovation process. On the way, it considers culture and the cultural industries, aesthetics, creativity and the creative industries, and a number ...of other similar areas of study, but the common point of interest is innovation. One main purpose of the book is to argue that there is a type of innovation, here labelled soft innovation, primarily concerned with changes in products (and perhaps processes) of an aesthetic or intellectual nature, that has largely been ignored in the study of innovation prevalent in economics. Examples of innovations that, as a result of this refocusing, are here placed at the centre of the analysis, include the writing and publishing of a new book; the writing, production, and launching of a new movie/film; the development and launch of a new advertising promotion; the design and production of a new range of furniture; and architectural activity in the generation of new-built form designs. The realisation of the existence of soft innovation means that not only is innovation more widespread than previously thought, but may also take a different form than commonly considered. The book has three parts. Part 1 is concerned with attempts to define and measure the extent and nature of soft innovation, with Chapter 1 introducing and overviewing the whole. Part 2 of the book is directed towards the economic analysis of soft innovation. Part 3 of the book is concerned with impacts and implications.
The beer of today-brewed from malted grain and hops, manufactured by large and often multinational corporations, frequently associated with young adults, sports, and drunkenness-is largely the result ...of scientific and industrial developments of the nineteenth century. Modern beer, however, has little in common with the drink that carried that name through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Looking at a time when beer was often a nutritional necessity, was sometimes used as medicine, could be flavored with everything from the bark of fir trees to thyme and fresh eggs, and was consumed by men, women, and children alike,Beer in the Middle Agesand the Renaissance presents an extraordinarily detailed history of the business, art, and governance of brewing. During the medieval and early modern periods beer was as much a daily necessity as a source of inebriation and amusement. It was the beverage of choice of urban populations that lacked access to secure sources of potable water; a commodity of economic as well as social importance; a safe drink for daily consumption that was less expensive than wine; and a major source of tax revenue for the state. InBeer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Richard W. Unger has written an encompassing study of beer as both a product and an economic force in Europe. Drawing from archives in the Low Countries and England to assemble an impressively complete history, Unger describes the transformation of the industry from small-scale production that was a basic part of housewifery to a highly regulated commercial enterprise dominated by the wealthy and overseen by government authorities. Looking at the intersecting technological, economic, cultural, and political changes that influenced the transformation of brewing over centuries, he traces how improvements in technology and in the distribution of information combined to standardize quality, showing how the process of urbanization created the concentrated markets essential for commercial production. Weaving together the stories of prosperous businessmen, skilled brewmasters, and small producers, this impressively researched overview of the social and cultural practices that surrounded the beer industry is rich in implication for the history of the period as a whole.
PDF
