Abandoned bodies and spaces of sacrifice: Pesticide drift activism and the contestation of neoliberal environmental politics in California

Recent research suggests that many key strands of California’s agrofood activism appear to accommodate, rather than confront, the neoliberalization of environmental governance, and that such accommodations might problematically constrain the transformative potential of activists’ work. In this paper, I examine the case of pesticide drift activism in California, which, as an exception to this trend, provides a provocative and useful case study for interrogating the influence of neoliberalization on social/environmental activism. I argue that California’s pesticide drift activism can be understood as a reaction to the spaces of sacrifice created and exacerbated by the failure of unionization-based pesticide reform efforts, a promising but compromised regulatory apparatus, longstanding farmworker powerlessness, neoliberal regulatory rollback, and neoliberalized pesticide politics – a mosaic of factors that have worked together to produce a regulatory structure that has always been better at registering pesticides than at reducing pollution. I show that pesticide drift activists’ reliance on confrontational practice, collective action, and strategic alliances have been crucial to the movement’s success with bringing visibility to this issue and with gaining traction in the political arena. Thus, at the same time that neoliberalization can exacerbate physical spaces of sacrifice, this case study illustrates that it can also, unexpectedly perhaps, generate new, non-neoliberal political spaces for social change.     

Groundwater resources in the Jabal Al Hass region,northwest Syria: an assessment of past use and future potential

In many cases, the development of groundwater resources to boost agricultural production in dry areas has led to a continuous decline in groundwater levels; this has called into question the sustainability of such exploitation. In developing countries, limited budgets and scarce hydrological data often do not allow groundwater resources to be assessed through groundwater modeling. A case study is presented of a low-cost water-balance approach to groundwater resource assessments in a 1,550 km² semi-arid region in northwestern Syria. The past development of irrigated agriculture and its effect on the groundwater system were studied by analysis of Landsat images and long-term groundwater level changes, respectively. All components of the groundwater balance were determined. Groundwater recharge was estimated using the chloride mass balance method. Over the past three decades, groundwater levels have declined, on average, 23 m, coinciding with a two-fold increase in the groundwater-irrigated area. Groundwater resources are currently depleted by a value that lies between 9.5×10⁶ and 118×10⁶ m³ year^?1, which is larger than can be compensated for by a future decrease in natural discharge or changes in boundary conditions. However, groundwater resources are likely to be sufficient to supply domestic and livestock needs in the area.     

Detection of rice sheath blight for in-season disease management using multispectral remote sensing

Timely diagnosis of crop diseases in fields is critical for precision on-farm disease management. Remote sensing technology can be used as an effective and inexpensive method to identify diseased plants in a field scale. However, due to the diversity of crops and their associated diseases, application of the technology to agriculture is still in research stage, which needs to be elaborately investigated for algorithm development and standard image processing procedures. In this paper, we examined the applicability of broadband high spatial-resolution ADAR (Airborne Data Acquisition and Registration) remote sensing data to detect rice sheath blight and developed an approach to further explore the applicability. Based on the field symptom measurements, a comprehensive field disease index (DI) was constructed to measure infection severity of the disease and to relate to image sampled infections. In addition to direct band digital number (DN) values, band ratio indices and standard difference indices were used to examine possible correlations between field and image data. The results indicated that the broadband remote sensing imagery has the capability to detect the disease. Some image indices such as RI₁₄, SDI₁₄ and SDI₂₄ worked better than others. A correlation coefficient above 0.62 indicated that these indices would be valuable to use for identification of the rice disease. In the validation analysis, we obtained a small root mean square error (RMS = 9.1), confirming the applicability of the developed method. Although the results were encouraging, it was difficult to discriminate healthy plants from light infection ones when DI < 20 because of their spectral similarities. Hence, it was clear that identification accuracy increases when infection reaches medium-to-severe levels (DI > 35). This phenomenon illustrated that remote sensing images with higher spectral resolution (more bands and narrower bandwidth) were required in order to further examine the capability of separating the light diseased plants from healthy plants.     

实施农业名牌战略,创建梅州特色农业品牌的构想

实施农业名牌战略，既是适应社会经济发展和提高农业综合效益的需要，也是实现区域农业可持续发展的必然选择，必须遵循“市场导向、特色优势、绿色发展”3大原则。梅州市具有发展特色农业，构建名牌的有利条件，应在制定创名牌规划、开发无公害优质农产品、创造培育农业名牌的制度环境和经营机制3方面寻求对策。     

结合农业科技园建设观光农园的探讨——以潮州鹤陇山农业科技园与观光农园的规划设计为例

广东省经济和旅游业发展位于全国榜首，人多地少全国最为突出，但乡村旅游建设相对滞后，文中通过潮州市郊鹤陇山农业科技园与观光农园规划设计，论述了发展高新技术农业是新世纪广东农业必由之路，提出结合农业科技园建设，叠加农业观光园，把生态农业建设与旅游文化结合起来，是广东乡村旅游发展的主要途径。     

DEVELOPMENT OF A DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR MANAGING PESTICIDE LOSSES IN AGRICULTURAL WATERSHEDS

1 INTRODUCTION Agricultural use of pesticides has been recognized as one of the important non-point pollution sources in the world, and the pesticide application to agricultural lands has led to large amounts of residues discharged into surface water through runoff (Leonard, 1990). There have been growing concerns about the fate and transport of pesticides in agricultural lands, due to the associated adverse impacts on water environment and human health (Agassi et al., 1995; Ng and Clegg…     

Nitrogen isotope indicators of seasonal source variability to groundwater

 A nitrogen isotope study of soil water and groundwater in southern Indiana, USA, in 1991–1992 demonstrated considerable variations in nitrate degradation processes compared to an earlier investigation in 1986–1987. Although N-fertilizers were applied in May 1991, the δ¹⁵N values in soil water decreased in February 1992, indicating its delayed release into the system after substantial rainfall. The δ¹⁵N values of groundwater decreased from +12.3‰ in November 1991 to +11.3‰ in February 1992, and to +7.5‰ in March 1992. The increased residence time of nitrate in the soil resulted in increased denitrification, ammonia volatilization and plant uptake, and reduced threat to the groundwater quality. The 1986–1987 study in the area reported that excessive rainfall during the summer rapidly transported the nitrate to deeper horizons and drastically reduced volatilization and microbial reduction of nitrate, thus increasing the immediate threat to the groundwater quality in the area. The present study demonstrated that nitrogen isotopic signatures can be used to determine the effects of local soil type, rainfall, and land-use practices on the fate of nitrate in the subsurface. Received: 18 February 1997 · Accepted: 17 June 1997     

农业地质信息在农业地质研究与区划中的应用

农业地质是以地质理论为基础与大农业专业理论相结合以解决农业相关问题，服务于农业，以在农业生产实践中获取最大的社会和经济效益。虽然我国正在广泛开展农业地质调查获取了较多的农业地质信息，但信息利用程度低，发挥的经济效益不够理想。分析了在我国开展农业地质研究的意义及其存在的问题，并就农业地质信息在农业区划中的应用进行了探讨。     

Environmental policy reform on north-eastern Brazil’s agricultural frontier

The expansion of modern agriculture in developing countries presents numerous challenges for environmental policy makers. Environmental policies for agriculture in north-eastern Brazil’s soybean belt are analyzed, with emphasis on the role of a non-state actor in leading policy reforms. An organization representing large farmers is leading policy reforms to reduce the environmental impacts of modern agriculture. By contrast, state agencies are relatively weak and ineffective. The analysis situates this question conceptually in literatures stressing the political and structural causes of corporate environmentalism and literatures explaining the increasingly strong role of non-state actors in environmental governance. The case study focuses on the content of reforms, reasons why the non-state actor is so prominent, and the implications of policy reforms. State agencies face major challenges in environment-agriculture policy debates in places where environmental subsidies are unlikely, environmental information is poor, and organized private interests are influential.