节气

Awakening of Insects The traditional Chinese lunar calendar divides the year into 24 solar terms.Awakening of Insects,the third sola term,is from March 5-20 this year.During this period,you may feel a rise in temperature,and notice the increased rainfall.The name of the solar term-Awake ning of In sects-refers to the fact that animals,which hibernate during winter,are awakened by spring thunder,and that everything on earth is returning,to life.Farmers in most regions of China begin plowing fields during Awakening of Insects.     

两纲之窗

Collecting Photos
On September 24, workers who carried out the national preferential agricultural policy, organized by Heping Town, in Shaowu, in East China＇s Fujian Province, visited Kantou Village to provide special services to farmers and ＂left-behind women＂ （women whose husbands moved to other regions of China to do manual work）. The special services included collecting photos,     

节气

Minor Cold The traditional Chinese lunar calendar divides the year into 24 solar terms.Minor Cold,the 23rd solar term,is on January 6.20 this year.During Minor Cold,it is freezing in most regions of China.Normally,Minor Cold is the coldest period of winter.Therefore,you should wear enough clothes to keep warm.Also,you may want to eat some warmnatured foods,such as beef,mutton,chestnuts and baked sweet potatoes.     

立春

The traditional Chinese lunar calendar divides the year into 24 solar terms.The Start of Spring,the first solar term,is from February 4-19 this year.Start of Spring is like a"prologue"to spring.The so lar term m ight bring you vigorous vitality and immense joy,as virtually every living thing grows vigorously after a long,cold winter.The days are getting longer and the weather is becoming warmer.     

The Role of Women in Social Development

WOMEN, a powerful force accounting for some 50 percent of world's total population, are deeply involved in social development and are actively joining their male counterparts in promoting the progress of mankind. Nonetheless, people seem to be paying increasingly less attention to the aforementioned facts. Therefore, the following question is meant to call people's attention to the matter. What would happen if women withdraw from economic, political, cultural and family activities? In terms of the economy, it would mean that about one billion people would go on strike due to the fact that some 897 million women across the world are engaged in paid economic activities. The worldwide grain output     

Science and Technology Helps Farmers Get Rich

LAIZHOU City in Shandong Province is situated in the northwest Jiaodong Peninsula of Bohai Bay. In the past ten years, the development of agricultural science and technology, especially folk scientific and technological institutions, which are engaged in scientific research according to market demands, and have carried out production, management, promotion of agricultural technology and services, and have helped to quickly develop poor agricultural areas. The women of Laizhou are a vital new force in this cause.     

Women Farmers Live in New Houses

MOVING into the tidy, cozy and newly designed homes, women farmers in Hancunhe Village in the southwest suburb of Beijing feel their lives have really changed. They know the majority of people living in cities do not have such houses. The villa-style houses with large courtyards have water, gas and telephones. They go to work at regular hours instead of getting up to     

Rural Women Participate in Agricultural Production

THE rural market economy is becoming feminized because many male laborers are transferring to nonagricultural work. Women are now making a show of their decisive force in utilizing agricultural resources. As a result, agriculture's sustainable development will more and more depend on women's qualifications, including how well they will manage agricultural resources and how well they will master science and technology. In fact, rural women don't yet have full economic independence. Although they have involved themselves in economic activities and have played a     

海南岛欢乐节(英文)

Alarge tourist celebration activity, Merry-Making Festival of Hainan Island, China will be held from November 3 to 24, 2000. The festival will highlight Haikou and Sanya resorts and from there radiate to the whole province. During the festival, there will be altogether 33 activities, including a sailing boat race, international beach volleyball match, international golf tournament, tropical forest sightseeing and forest travel on foot. Conferences are also a part of     

舌尖上的幸福

“时光中有青梅煮酒”,中国人会把“节气菜”做成尘世的一卷诗章,也会把山川风物收到盘中,让味蕾融入城市芳华,还会在盘中做一幅水墨画,彰显中华美食的“国风古韵”。曾经,我们在美食中回味成长的痕迹;当下,让厨房升腾起迷人的烟火,在“舌尖的幸福”中迎接新的一年。     

Diversification and Work Satisfaction: Testing a Claim by Marx and Engels for Farmers

In conventional economics, a great deal of energy has been devoted to empirical validation of the benefits of specialization in terms of efficiency, in fields including the agricultural sector. Marx and Engels's claim that the diversification of working lives would increase work satisfaction has gained attention among social scientists but has never been verified for the agricultural sector, despite a growing body of literature on the determinants of work satisfaction. Based on a survey of Swiss and northeast German farmers, this study shows that farm diversification significantly increases work satisfaction. This applies both to the lines of agricultural production pursued on a farm and to the farm's nonagricultural activities.     

Farmers' perceptions of agrarian change in north-west Portugal

Geographers have consistently failed to analyse the perceptions of the inhabitants of rural areas, and in particular farmers' views of agrarian change. This paper analyses the perceptions of farmers in the agricultural region of Entre-Douro e Minho in north-west Portugal. Six villages with contrasting levels of innovation adoption were studied in 1983, and it is shown that there are major differences in the perceptions of farmers within these different parts of the region. These differences cannot be explained simply in terms of the age, tenure and education of the farmers, and it seems that the activities of rural extension officers, the general nature of the ‘place’ of each village, and its accessibility play important roles in influencing the perceptions of the farmers. Above all, it illustrates that, rather than being traditional and conservative, many of the farmers of north-west Portugal are keen to adopt new farming techniques.     

Entrepreneurs and producers: Identities of Finnish farmers in 2001 and 2006

The farmers' role within the EU has recently been under reconstruction: in addition to primary agricultural production farmers should fulfil multiple functions such as maintaining the rural landscape, conserving nature and providing services. One essential feature of this new role is the demand for entrepreneurship. Farmers should be capable of competing in the worldwide, global agricultural market. They are also encouraged to diversify into business activities beyond agriculture. How do farmers see themselves in this situation? Is their self-perception compatible with this new reconstruction of the farming economy and the farmers' role? Research, thus far, seems to indicate that traditional or production oriented identities are still dominant among farmers. But there is also some evidence that new identities, such as the entrepreneurial identity, are emerging. In our study we are especially interested in how Finnish farmers have met the demand for adapting to the role of an entrepreneur. We approach the issue of the farmers' changing role from a social psychological perspective by utilizing the concept of identity. Our empirical evidence comes from two nation-wide postal questionnaire data sets, both containing samples from three subgroups: conventional farmers focusing solely on primary agricultural production, diversified farmers who also had other business besides agricultural production, and rural non-agricultural small-scale businesses. The results show that Finnish farmers do not experience “entrepreneur” as something distant from themselves and as not fitting in with their world of ideas, as the work of some researchers would depict. Instead, the majority of Finnish farmers, especially diversified farmers, conceive of themselves both as entrepreneurs and as producers.     

Attitudes to agricultural policy and farming futures in the context of the 2003 CAP reform: A comparison of farmers in selected established and new Member States

Farmers’ attitudes, to agricultural production, diversification and policy support, and behavioural intentions in five Member States of the EU (France, Lithuania, Slovakia, Sweden, England) are analysed comparatively. Groups of farmers with similarly held attitudes are identified using cluster analysis to investigate whether differences in attitudes are defined predominately according to national, east–west, size or other criteria. The results highlight that the vast majority of farmers in the enlarged EU retain a productivist mindset, wish to maintain an agricultural focus and strongly reject notions of policy liberalisation. However, while the overwhelming majority advocate protection they are more receptive to greater flexibility in terms of the instruments through which policy support may be delivered. Overall, the strongest opposition to policy liberalisation comes from farmers in the New Member States of the EU.     

Women and agricultural productivity: Reframing the Issues

Should agricultural development programmes target women in order to increase productivity? This article analyzes the challenges in distinguishing women's agricultural productivity from that of men. Most of the literature compares productivity on plots managed by women with those managed by men, ignoring the majority of agricultural households in which men and women are both involved in management and production. The empirical studies which have been carried out provide scant evidence for where the returns to projects may be highest, in terms of who to target. Yet, programmes that do not consider gendered responsibilities, resources and constraints, are unlikely to succeed, either in terms of increasing productivity or benefitting men and women smallholder farmers.     

The Emergence of Supermarkets with Chinese Characteristics: Challenges and Opportunities for China's Agricultural Development

The supermarket revolution is spreading faster in China than anywhere else in the world. Supermarket sales are growing by 30–40% per year, 2–3 times faster than in other developing regions. This development has been driven by factors shared by other developing countries as well as by China‐specific policies. It presents opportunities for Chinese agricultural producers to diversify into activities with higher income prospects, and for procurement systems to move into dealing directly with farmers. However, supermarket managers face several unique challenges: average farm size is small and farmers are not well organised. Hence, the whole supply chain must be upgraded, and government agricultural policy and rural development programmes have an important role in this.     

Repayment rate of loans from semi-formal financial institutions among small-scale farmers in Ethiopia: Two-limit Tobit analysis

Improving small-scale farmers’ access to credit is one of the ways of achieving increased agricultural productivity to reduce poverty in Ethiopia. In this study, a two-limit Tobit model was used to analyze the determinants of repayment rate of loans from semi-formal financial institutions among small-scale farmers in Ethiopia. Small group lending, was found to be related to the loan repayment rate of the farmers positively and significantly. Furthermore, agro-ecology, total land holding size, total livestock holding, experience in the use of agricultural extension services, contact with extension agents and income from off-farm activities were found to affect the loan repayment rate of the households significantly. Consideration of these factors would reduce default rates on borrowed funds from semi-formal credit sources in the area.     

Beyond the Farmgate: Factors Related to Agricultural Performance in Two Dairy Communities1

Abstract This study compares the logic of agricultural production across two dairy farming communities in the Northeast using a measure of agricultural performance as the dependent variable. Both communities have similar farm structural and environmental characteristics, but significantly different levels of agricultural performance. Our analysis indicates that dairy farmers in both communities are following the same basic path toward the optimization of milk production, but achieving quite different results. A comparison of structural factors shows that the high-production community is in a more advantageous position than the low-production community in terms of opportunities for formal education, access to markets, and proximity to an urban center. Acknowledgment of structural differences across agricultural communities is crucial to the development of adequate sociological theory, agricultural policy, and extension programming.     

Are Conventional Farmers Conventional? Analysis of the Environmental Orientations of Conventional New Zealand Farmers*

Abstract Within the political economy of agriculture and agrofood literatures there are examples of approaches that reject simple dichotomies between alternatives and the mainstream. In line with such approaches, we challenge the assumption that alternative agriculture, and its attendant improved environmental practices, alternative management styles, less intensive approaches, and better approaches to animal and ecosystem welfare, is the only source of agricultural sustainability. This article uses national farm‐survey results for New Zealand's sheep and beef, dairy, and horticulture sectors to examine conventional farmers, measure their assessments of farming practices, and assess their environmental orientation. Analysis identifies a proenvironmental cluster of farmers in each sector characterized by a higher environmental‐orientation score and distinct ratings of other farm practices queried in the survey. We interpret the results in terms of the exposure of different agricultural sectors to the effects of market‐based, audited, best‐practice schemes. The presence of shades of “greenness” among conventional farmers has important implications for environmental management and for our understanding of the various and complex pathways toward the greening of agrofood systems.