Paris,
19 July 2010
EFITA newsletter / 470 / European Federation for Information Technology in
Agriculture, Food and the Environment
EFITA 2011
11-14 July 2011 - PRAGUE
This is the first call for the 8th EFITA conference that will be held from
11th to 14th July 2011 at the campus site of the Czech University of Life
Sciences Prague, in a beautiful landlocked country in the heart of Europe,
in the Czech Republic. This letter is to brief you on the most important organizational
aspects of the forthcoming conference.
This conference is co-organized with the 8th ECPA, the 5th ECPLF conferences
as there is an established tradition of bringing EFITA, ECPA and ECPLF together.
>>> The main topics are as follows:
- Food quality
- SDI for Agriculture and Food industry
- Sensor technologies
- Future trends
- ICT Adoption
- Knowledge Management
- e-business
- Standardisation and Interoperability
- Rural development
- Nature protection
>>> Important dates
Paper submission: 1st September - 31st October 2010
Registrations: From 1st September 2010
Please check our official website www.efita2011.cz
for further information and full contact details. The website of the conference
will be updated on a regular basis.
See: http://www.efita2011.cz/
Contact: Eva CERVENKOVA
E-mail: conference2011(a)czu.cz
International Conference on Computer modeling and simulation (iccms 2011)
7 - 9 January 2011 - MUMBAI, India
Organized by the International Association of Computer Science and Information
Technology
See: http://www.iccms.org
Evidence-Based Agricultural and Rural Policy Making: Methodological and
Empirical Challenges of Policy Evaluation
17 - 18 February 2011 – ANCONA (Italy)
122nd EAAE Seminar - First call for papers
The 122nd EAAE Seminar is organized by the Interuniversity Research Consortium
on Rural, Environmental and Economic Policies (SPERA) in cooperation with
the Associazione “Alessandro Bartola” and the Department of Economics – Università
Politecnica delle Marche at Ancona, where the Seminar will be held.
>>> Theme
The Seminar focuses on the evaluation of agricultural and rural policies,
its methodology and practical experiences, with specific attention to the
challenges raised by new emerging objectives of agricultural and rural policies
in developed countries. Though the Seminar does not limit its focus on the
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), still both pillars of the CAP and their
recent evolution are exemplary of the need for robust evaluation approaches
and promote policy evaluation as a scientific challenge.
>>> Background
Over the last decade in many developed countries (and, in particular, in the
EU) agricultural and rural policies have been substantially reformed often
with the aim of assigning new and multiple objectives. The emphasis on agricultural
and rural policies as multipurpose policies is likely going to be confirmed
and reinforced even in the next decade. Multiple and heterogeneous goals,
however, make policy evaluation an even more complex task, because evaluation
is expected to look at the capacity of the policy to effectively achieve the
whole set of its stated objectives, across territories and farm-agent typologies.
Also as a reaction to this increasing complexity, policy evaluation has emerged
as a subdiscipline within social sciences on its own, with remarkable developments
in both methodological approaches and policy modelling. The attention of political
institutions sharply increased in this respect, they being persuaded that
any future developments in agricultural and rural policy making must be necessarily
grounded on a rigorous and extensive evaluation work.
>>> Objectives
The Seminar aims at bringing together papers presenting evaluation approaches
suited to investigate efficiency and effectiveness of policy instruments with
respect to their declared objectives. The emphasis of the Seminar is primarily
on methodological and quantitative contributions either presenting relevant
methodological improvements, or dealing with issues encountered in empirical
evaluation activities. The Seminar is also willing to accept contributions
providing wider views on policy evaluation exercises and literature. Surveys
and meta-analyses are welcome, as well as critical reflections on the theory
and the philosophy underlying policy evaluation. Contributions dealing with
how evaluators extract information from their models and applications and
deliver the information requested to policy makers and stake-holders are also
accepted.
>>> Topics
According to these background and objectives, Seminar topics can be summarized
in four categories within which participants are asked to contribute:
1. The methodology of agricultural and rural policy evaluation: Contributions
under this topic are expected to focus on existing and innovative evaluation
methods and tools. Methodological improvements may concern, among others:
policy modelling; econometric models and methods, as well as other quantitative
approaches; sampling procedures, experimental and non-experimental designs
(such as issues in building appropriate farm surveys); developments in data
collection and processing.
2. Experiences of agricultural and rural policy evaluation: The topic collects
possibly heterogeneous empirical applications sharing the objective of evaluating,
ex-post or exante, the impact of agricultural and rural policies. Related
to this, contributions on aspects related to data availability and quality
are also welcome. Particularly under this topic, the focus mostly (but not
exclusively) is on CAP evaluation; papers may concern the whole CAP, one whole
Pillar or single measures. They may present applications at the EU-wide level,
at a country level or at a smaller geographical scale. Papers analysing the
interaction between the effects of the CAP and the objectives pursued by other
EU policies are welcome.
3. The economics of agricultural and rural policy evaluation (with the CAP
in the foreground): contributions under this topic may analyse the theoretical
background of policy evaluation and, in particular: Which are, according to
policy objectives and instruments, the economic agents whose behaviour is
relevant to analyse policy impacts? Are we able to analyse such behaviour
thus correctly inferring the impact of the policy under scrutiny?
4. Evaluating the distributional implications of agricultural and rural policy:
This topic emphasizes one aspect that is often disregarded in both policy
evaluation and design. This seems relevant in particular for the CAP given
the emphasis on territorial cohesion as a major strategic objective of the
EU. As evaluation is often carried out at an aggregation level that does not
allow distributional implications across agents and territories to emerge,
papers contributing to take steps forward in this direction are particularly
appreciated.
>>> Call for papers
Participants who would like to present a paper are requested to submit an
abstract in English (max 2 pages; Times New Roman font size 12, single spacing)
by September 15, 2010 entering the following webpage (it is possible to upload
the abstract after registration): www.eaaeseminar.univpm.it.
Notification of acceptance/rejection will be communicated by October 31, 2010.
The deadline for the submission of the full version of the accepted papers
is January 15, 2011.
All accepted papers will be collected in a CD-ROM and those presented will
be then fed in the AgEcon Search database.
A selection of papers will be proposed for publication in a special issue
of an highly-ranked sectoral academic journal. The European Review of Agricultural
Economics (ERAE) has been approached as the first option.
The call for papers together with all information concerning the Seminar are
downloadable from the Seminar website: www.eaae-seminar.univpm.it. The Local
Organization Committee can be also contacted at eaae-seminar@univpm.it.
The Associazione “Alessandro Bartola”, as Seminar co-organizer, will also
provide additional website services and organize collateral events for Seminar
participants and external audience.
These services will be offered through its on-line journal, agriregionieuropa
(http://www.agriregionieuropa.it/). More details will be provided few months
before the Seminar.
>>> Invited Papers
The International and Program Committee is inviting prominent scholars and
policy makers to present key-note papers covering the Seminar topics. The
Program of invited speakers will be communicated soon.
Contact: Roberto ESPOSTI
E-mail: r.esposti(a)univpm.it
Launch of the LaProf Web Portal
The LaProf Web Portal (http://www.language-learning-portal.eu)
was publicly launched at the beginning of the month. The Portal focuses on
the language learning needs of agricultural professionals, providing access
to digital content on topics such as food management, horticulture, animal
science, biotechnology, management and many others. The learning scenarios
aim at supporting the agricultural professionals throughout their learning,
working and mobility processes.
The LaProf Web portal may be used to find:
* Interactive multilingual language learning units, exercises and terminology
customized for the agricultural sector
* Multilingual WebQuests with focus on linguistic and cultural issues to support
immigration processes
* Greek and Finnish language learning resources for beginners
* Lists of relevant language learning institutions in Greece and Finland and
other useful information
The multilingual LaProf Portal is currently available in seven languages (English,
Greek, Romanian, Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian and Polish) and next steps envisage
its development in Russian and French language. It has been developed in the
context of the LaProf project (www.laprof.eu), a multilateral project that
is funded by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Commission.
We cordially invite you to visit the LaProf Web Portal and find resources
of interest/relevance to your work at: www.language-learning-portal.eu
We also kindly ask you to take 5 minutes of your time to let us know how it
looked at: http://survey.agroknow.gr/index.php?sid=67922&lang=en
See: http://www.language-learning-portal.eu
Contact: Jan PAWLOWSKI, Marjo HALMIALA
E-mail: jan.pawlowski(at)titu.jyu.fi, marjo.halmiala(at)jyu.fi
OceanDocs
Research & Publications in Marine Science in digital form, including
preprints, published articles, technical reports, working papers and more.
OceanDocs is supported by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC)
specifically to collect, preserve and facilitate access to all research output
from members of their Ocean Data and Information Networks (ODINS). It is one
of a number of complementary thematic digital marine and aquatic repositories
including the Aquatic Commons, which is supported by the International Association
of Aquatic and Marine Science Libraries and Information Centers (IAMSLIC).
The records of both repositories are harvested by Avano which aggregates records
from marine and aquatic repositories around the World.
See: http://www.oceandocs.org
Looking east looking west: Organic and quality food marketing in Asia and
Europe
edited by: Rainer Haas, Maurizio Canavari, Bill Slee, Chen Tong and Bundit
Anurugsa
This book represents a unique collection of European and Asian perspectives
on the production, trade and consumption of high quality food.
The rapidly growing demand for organic and quality food in Europe imposes
new challenges on competing food value chains. Europe, as the biggest worldwide
food importer, attracts many developing and developed countries in Asia. Prospering
Chinese and Thai food markets offer new opportunities for European operators.
Wealthy and informed consumers on both continents search for trustworthy high
quality food products. Farmers, operators and retailers from distant cultures
are coping with different standards, facing the ever increasing necessity
for mutual understanding.
This publication is the output of Bean-Quorum, a European funded Asia-Link
project. Bean-Quorum represents a consolidated network of researchers working
together with the business sector and NGOs to enhance European Asian understanding
about organic and quality food.
This book describes global trends in organic and quality food trade and connects
them with recent developments in Asian and European market structures. Selected
case studies illustrate the impact of organic and quality food production
on topics ranging from sustainable rural development, to the potential of
exotic new plant varieties to purchase decisions of European or Asian retail
managers. Selected European markets are mirrored by the situation in Chinese
and Thai markets. Finally, environmental issues concerning global trade of
quality food are
addressed.
2010 – 240 pages – paperback – ISBN: 978-90-8686-095-1 – € 46 – US$ 69
See: http://www.wageningenacademic.com/eastwest
Contact: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Rainer Haas
E-mail: rainer.haas(a)boku.ac.at
For you golfers and others
A man is watching a game of golf on TV. But he keeps switching channels
to a dirty movie featuring a lusty couple having raucous sex.
"I don't know whether to watch them or the game", he says to his
wife.
"For Heaven's sake, watch them," his wife says. "You already
know how to play golf!"
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