Finishing store lambs from organic hill and upland farms OF0119

1. The aim of this study was to assess the economics and constraints associated with home finishing lambs on a range of organic hill and upland farms in England and Wales, and to evaluate the potential for further finishing on registered farms in the lowlands. 2. The current state of the organic sheep sector is briefly reviewed. This identifies problems of scale, limited premia and uneveness of supply as limiting factors to more rapid development of the market and associated production systems. 3. To quanitfy the effect of organic management on financial performance, hill and upland farms were classified under four typical systems, depending on the degree of intensification. 4. Without a sizeable area of improved ground, to which fertiliser and other inputs could have been applied conventionally, flocks based on high hill or marginal hill systems were least affected by switching to organic management. Flock Gross Margin on the marginal hill declined by approximately 7%. 5. On more intensive farms, typified by Welsh hill or upland farming systems, there is greater potential to finish lambs at higher stocking rates under conventional management, and the consequences of changing to organic management are greatly increased. Assuming a 10% premium for fnished organic lambs, deviating from convetional practice to produce store lambs or finish lambs at higher production cost, reduced flock Gross Margin by approximately 12-15%. Without a premium, this deficit increased to 15-20%. 6. The Organic Aid Scheme can make good the likely income loss during the first two years after conversion, when the highest rates are payable. However, in the long-term organic flocks must compete solely on the basis os a premium paid for finished, and ideally, for store lambs. 7. Physical and financial constraints were identified as t wy systems had not developed linking potential production of store lambs in the hills/uplands with finishing on organic farms in the lowlands. These were mainly scale and infrastructure, availability of suitable feeds and the likely level of return to the lowland farmer from a store lamb finishing enterprise. Potential sources of feed for finishing organic lambs were assessed. These include permanent pasture, short-term leys, catch crops, grazed set-aside land and conserved fodder. 8. Integration with existing organic systems of all types was estimated to have the potential to finish an extra 10-15,000 lambs per annum, equivalent to the number of lambs currently receiving an organic premium. 9. Further opportunities to expand finishing capacity on lowland farms were examined. Mixed organic farms are likely to have little or no capacity to finish bought in store lambs, except where overall stocking rates are constrained by insufficient ewe/suckler cow quota, or where catch crops are added to the rotation. 10. The addition of a store lamb enterprise to lowland systems was calculated to increase farm Gross MArgin by 2-3%, depending on the type of farm (dairy, stockless arable, or mixed). This represented a marginal return on capital invested in a store lamb finishing enterprise of 9-24%. 1. The financial risks involved, the availability of suitable labour and fixed equipment, and reluctance to vary arable rotations, make store lamb finishing enterprises less attractive to the lowland farmer. 12. Beyond the capacity to increase the number of certified lambs currently offered by up to 50%, greater opportunities are only likely to develop, when there is a significant increase in land (particularly on arable farms) entering conversion

EVOLUTIONARY STABLE PROPERTIES OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN INDONESIA

The major idea is to use memetics as an analytical tool on viewing how the existing political parties towards General Election 2004 creating formation of their presidential candidacy, ideology behind it, the change of political atmosphere it will bring, etc. into a compact evolutionary model that exhibits fitness of each political party within population of a society. The strategy used is through transforming polling statistical language into evolutionary stable language of dynamical system. Here, memetic method is applied as an evolutionary computational tool

Robust state estimation using mixed integer programming

This letter describes a robust state estimator based on the solution of a mixed integer program. A tolerance range is associated with each measurement and an estimate is chosen to maximize the number of estimated measurements that remain within tolerance (or equivalently minimize the number of measurements out of tolerance). Some small-scale examples are given which suggest that this approach is robust in the presence of gross errors, is not susceptible to leverage points, and can solve some pathological cases that have previously caused problems for robust estimation algorithms

Robust algorithm for generalized state estimation

This letter introduces a robust generalized state estimator which is able to detect and reject gross measurement errors, parameter errors, and topology errors simultaneously. The solution is based on finding a consistent estimate which minimizes the total number of hypothesized gross errors. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear program. A small-scale ac estimation example is given which illustrates some of the properties of the method

Power Law Signature in Indonesian Population

The paper analyzes the spreading of population in Indonesia. The spreading of population in Indonesia is clustered in two regional terms, i.e.: kabupaten and kotamadya. It is interestingly found that the rank in all kabupaten respect to the population does not have fat tail properties, while in the other hand; there exists power-law signature in kotamadya. We analyzed that this fact could be caused by the equal or similar infrastructural development in all regions; nevertheless, we also note that the first 20 kabupatens are dominated in Java and Sumatera. Furthermore, the fat tail character in the rank of kotamadya could be caused by the big gap between big cities one another, e.g.: Jakarta, Surabaya, and others. The paper ends with some suggestions of more attention to infrastructural development in eastern regional cities

Effect of increased CO₂ and iron levels on the marine plankton food web during a mesocosm experiment

A mesocosm experiment was carried out in the Raunefjord (Norway) during 25 days, to investigate the interactive effects of increased CO2 and iron availability on the plankton community. The seawater carbonate system in the mesocosms was manipulated to achieve two different CO2 levels, corresponding to the present (390 ppmv, LC) and to levels predicted for year 2100 (900 ppmv, HC), in combination with ambient and increased dissolved Fe (dFe) concentrations in a full factorial design. We observed a shift in the plankton community structure, initially dominated by picoeukaryotes and small nanoeukaryotes, changing to an Emiliania huxleyi dominated bloom. E. huxleyi and Synechococcus were the most sensitive organisms to changes in CO2 and Fe levels, being negatively affected by increased CO2 and favoured by high dFe levels. Picoeukaryotes, large nanoplankton, viruses and ciliates abundances were not affected by changes in CO2 or dFe levels. Bacterial abundance showed a significant positive response to high CO2 but it was unaffected by dFe. Total mesozooplankton abundances did not change significantly. The relevance of these results within the global change scenario will be discussed.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech