Academic literature on the topic 'Vegetal Politic'

Abstract Vegetti’s book tries to decipher and recast the complex history of the interpretation of the political Plato in a compelling historical and philosophical analysis. This review article presents an intellectual profile of Mario Vegetti and a critical engagement with his historical and politico-philosophical approach. It concludes with the suggestion that we should investigate the vicious circle of philosophy and politics in Plato’s Republic in light of Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach.

Abstract A methodology for plant qualitative research is at an early stage of development. While conducting a multispecies ethnography of gardeners and the plants they grow for food in a neighborhood in transition from social housing to a mixed-income community in Toronto, the author wondered, How to account for plants and their agency? What is evidence of vegetal politics? What is a multispecies ethnographer doing when decentering the human in relation to garden plants, beyond what is un-done ontologically? This article situates itself in the plant turn and proposes a methodology to account for plant agency in gardens and to identify vegetal politics. The author builds on the methodological work of other scholars of human-plant relations and posthumanist notions of relational agency to develop a three-step method: (1) recognize plant time, (2) participate with plants, and (3) scale up. Central to the methodology—and a key contribution the author puts forward—is a shift away from the researcher considering plants as individuals and instead understanding plant communities as the unit of analysis. This shift in scale, while recognizing plant time and the relational agency of plants, permits the identification of vegetal politics and has allowed the author to theorize plants as political actors in cities that support health.

Plants perform their own interests and purposes. Plants perform in ways that afford and invite specific human experiences. Plants also perform complex biopolitical roles. With these multivalent understandings of plant performance in mind, this introduction to the “Plant Performance” issue of Performance Philosophy outlines the editors’ broadly feminist approach to the challenges facing scholars and artists in the field of Critical Plant Studies. We present these challenges, including colonisation and decolonisation, botanical aesthetics and its vegetal limits, instrumentality and vegetal respect, and phytopolitics and plant liveliness, as provocations for scholars and artists grappling with ecological, political and creative human relations with the vegetal world. The introduction, alongside the eight essays included in the issue, considers how thinking with plant performance might create conditions for a more contextual, critical, reflexive, nuanced, and/or urgent understanding of plant-human relationships, both historically and in the current moment. In addition to considering questions of plant performative agency, the issue foregrounds the politico-aesthetic conditions in which plant performances cannot help but occur. It details how specific works of performance art intervene in these conditions, and it contributes to the development of a more global and multiply-situated network of performative, critical plant knowledges, relations, and practices.

A series of enigmatic ninth- or tenth-century wall paintings from Nishapur in eastern Iran seems to have been imbued with amuletic, apotropaic, or talismanic properties. Recapitulating while exaggerating some of the properties of marble, the paintings also include anthropomorphic and vegetal imagery. Their idiosyncratic iconography seems to highlight a tension between physis and technē that may be relevant to the ambiguous ontology of efficacious images in general.

Regarding to the democracy as the people's sovereignty, the general election of 2014 was held by the aim to select a representative. The aim of this study is to determine whether there is criminal offense of money politics in Serang district during the legislative electoral campaign according to the regulation no. 8 of 2012 on the General Election of DPR, DPD and DPRD. This research was conducted by using juridical empirical approach directly to the committee electoral supervisor of Serang District as the result of violations that was reported by the committee electoral supervisors during campaigns, involving children under the age and money politics, but in fact most of the violations are money politics. Modes of money politics violation that committed by legislative candidates in Serang are (1) Direct money politics in the form of cash or stuffs by legislative candidates or successful teams; (2) Indirect money politics in form of distributing foods such as rice, noodles, vegetable oil, eggs and others; promising grants for a group or individual. The identification of the problem are 1) How the law enforcement against criminal acts of money politics fulfills the legal certainty? 2) What types and forms of acts that can be qualified as criminalization of money politics during the campaign? In fact, to prove money politics cases in Serang is difficult, because of insufficient evidence, political constraints of money politics violations in general election of law enforcement in Serang, electoral supervisor having trouble in finding evidence of violations of electoral money politics and lack of attention from environment, the need for political education, and encouragement and fair of law enforcement officers.Keywords: General Election, Money Politics, Criminalism, Law Enforcement.

This thesis is focused on citizens’ based environmental initiatives, particularly concentrating on self-managed urban gardening. My exploration was largely dedicated to the study of vegetal politics. With this term I refer to the open-ended materialdiscursive assemblage of politics and policies carried out by public institutions and groups of citizens in urban green spaces (vegetal politics on the vegetal) and interactions of human and nonhuman actors that co-construct urban green spaces, particularly focusing on the role of vegetal agency (vegetal politics of the vegetal). The research is situated in the field of environmental sociology. The whole research and writing process has been enrooted in postanthropocentric newmaterialist feminisms, which I combined with political ecology. The research was made performing ethnography, which at best could investigate situated material practices of the everyday life. I combined a more classical ethnographic approach (observant participation and semi-structured interviews) with multispecies ethnography (an emergent nonanthropocentric methodology). I selected the city of Rome as my ethnographic terrain. The city is experiencing since at least a decade a structural withdrawal of public institutions in charge of the management of urban spaces and green areas and a large spread of environmental citizens’ based micropolitical practices. The fieldwork was carried out from September 2017 to September 2018 in the Roman territory. The investigation showed the analytical and material power of vegetal politics. That is, a postanthropocentric political analysis and practice that allows to creep in the folds of reality, giving emphasis throughout the whole research and analysis process on actors who risked otherwise being invisiblised by the use of a fully humanist and anthropocentric length. The study revealed that politics and policies pursued by public institutions and by gardeners on green spaces (vegetal politics on the vegetal), in some cases reiterate or consolidate at a material level spatial injustices, particularly when a normative and controlling attitude prevails unopposed. Instead, from the daily interaction with the nonhuman world a political material relationality emerges which leads some activists to recognize subjectivity to nonhuman actors with whom they enter in a closer relationship of care and alliance. The analysis of interactions between humans, plants and nonhuman actors make emerge the power and capacity for action and transformation of the latters, which arise exceeding the boundaries of human intentionality (vegetal politics of the vegetal). It is precisely when human agency is lacking or incapable of domestication that the power of action of the nonhuman is more clearly shown, indicating that agency is shared and continually negotiated.

In my dissertation, I study the spatio-temporal variegation and transnational circulation of vegetable commodities using the case of edamame beans (the largest frozen vegetable sector in Asia). My dissertation shows that food production and trade in East Asia have fundamentally changed over the past several decades. Rapid development has lifted the region out of subsistence and into middle-class and luxury consumption. As a result, East Asia is quickly becoming the center of the global food economy. The development of edamame industries is central to explaining the transformation of the agriculture and food industries across the region. I employ a mixed methods approach that includes participant-observation, semi-structured interviews with 40 edamame farmers and entrepreneurs, and GIS mapping, alongside Social Network Analysis (SNA). In my analysis, I coin the concept of “border assemblages,” arguing that edamame trade incorporates network and state-territorial characteristics. Building on this approach, my research bridges two social science sub-fields that scholars have often applied empirically but not theoretically: international politics and regional agrarian development. Three novel findings emerge from this research: First, my research adds to the literature on Asian colonialism by showing how the Japanese Empire and the post-World War Two (WWII) U.S. Cold War regime territorialized East Asia to develop a regulatory assemblage of regional agricultural production and trade. Second, after the 1980s, a new type of food regime emerged in East Asia following the introduction of new World Trade Organization food safety regulations that reterritorialized the food production networks in Asia. My research conceptualizes the emergence of the new food regimes in an East Asian context according to the political economy and ecology of edamame trade among Taiwan, Japan, and China. Third, another strand of my research contributes to the geopolitical understanding of the edamame trade with regard to food scares and contract farming. I extend the definition of contract farming to encompass international regulatory bodies and argue that trade agreements and international food laws, such as the Codex Alimentarius, have significantly shaped the agrarian landscape in Asia.
2021-01-11

The present work provides an ex-post assessment of the UK 5-a-day information campaign where the positive effects of information on consumption levels are disentangled from the potentially conflicting price dynamics. A model-based estimate of the counterfactual (no-intervention) scenario is computed using data from the Expenditure and Food Survey between 2002 and 2006. For this purpose fruit and vegetable demand is modelled employing Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS) specification with demographic effects and controlling for potential endogeneity of prices and total food expenditure.

The present work provides an ex-post assessment of the UK 5-a-day information campaign where the positive effects of information on consumption levels are disentangled from the potentially conflicting price dynamics. A model-based estimate of the counterfactual (no-intervention) scenario is computed using data from the Expenditure and Food Survey between 2002 and 2006. For this purpose fruit and vegetable demand is modelled employing Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS) specification with demographic effects and controlling for potential endogeneity of prices and total food expenditure.

O objetivo deste trabalho foi a substituição de polióis sintéticos provenientes do petróleo por óleos vegetais naturais ou seus derivados na produção de poliuretanos, obtendo-se uma gama de produtos de menor custo. Foram preparadas espumas rígidas de poliuretano a partir de óleo de soja e de mamona modificados que podem ser utilizadas como isolantes térmicos em câmaras frigoríficas, refrigeradores e interior de paredes duplas, na construção civil. A produção de PU à base de óleo vegetal apresenta-se também como uma alternativa para a aplicação do glicerol residual, proveniente da produção do biodiesel. Os óleos vegetais foram hidroxilados através do método perácido in situ e/ou por reação de transesterificação com álcool polifuncional (glicerol, trietanolamina). Os polióis obtidos foram caracterizados através de cromatografia líquida de alta eficiência (CLAE), viscosidade Brookfield, espectroscopia no infravermelho, ressonância magnética nuclear, cromatografia de permeação em gel, índice de hidroxilas, índice de acidez, análise termogravimétrica e análise calorimétrica exploratória diferencial. O índice de hidroxilas alcançado variou de 166 a 490 mgKOH/g, a viscosidade de 38 a 2390 cP e a massa molar de 756 a 2833 g/mol, valores que possibilitam a aplicação destes em processos industriais de espumas rígidas. As espumas foram preparadas pelo método Hand Mix na razão molar NCO/OH 1,2:1 utilizando pentano como agente expansor não prejudicial à camada de ozônio e isocianato não tóxico, difenilmetano diisocianato (MDI). Estas foram caracterizadas através de densidade geométrica, análise dinâmico-mecânica, termocondutividade, ensaios de compressão e microscopia eletrônica de varredura. As espumas à base de óleos vegetais modificados (50 Kg/m3) apresentaram condutividade térmica (0,03 W/mK) e resistência mecânica (200 kPa) muito próximas às obtidas com amostra comercial. Ensaios de biodegradação dos polióis e poliuretanos foram realizados através do teste de Sturm modificado, indicando haver biodegradação apenas para os polióis. Devido à baixa biodegradabilidade das espumas à base de óleo vegetal e com o intuito de destiná-las corretamente as espumas foram recicladas por glicerólise e os polióis obtidos foram utilizados no preparo de espumas recicladas sem perda de resistência mecânica em relação às espumas à base de óleo vegetal e comercial.
Soybean oil and castor oil were modified and used to prepare rigid polyurethane foam with similar properties to a commercial foam used to thermal insulation applications. Soybean oil was firstly modified using a peracid method, applying formic acid and hydrogen peroxide to yield a formiated soy polyol. Further transesterification was performed with a polyfunctional alcohol to increase OH-functionality. Castor oil, which has hydroxyl groups in its molecular structure, sometimes was only transesterified. The vegetable polyols were characterized by OH-number, Brookfield viscosity, DSC (Differential Scanning Calorimetry) and SEC (Size Exclusion Chromatography). The foams were prepared at constant NCO/OH ratio (1,2:1) by the Hand Mix method and poured into a steel box. They were characterized using SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy), TGA (Thermogravimetry), DMA (Dynamic Mechanical Analysis) and Closed-cell Content Test. The geometric density and the compression strength of foams were determined respectively by the mass/volume relation and through the Table Tensile Tester. After modification, the polyols reached an OH-number between 166-490 mgKOH/g oil, showing a low viscosity and molecular weight, allowing the preparation of a rigid vegetable foam with a geometric density of 50 kg/m3, compression strength around 200 kPa and thermal properties similar to commercial products. Experiments for the biodegradation evaluation of the polyols and the polyurethanes were performed by the modified Sturm test, indicating biodegradation only for the polyols. To properly allocate the foam, these were recycled by glycolyses and polyols were used in the preparation of recycled foam without loss of strength.

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Ciências Agrárias. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Recursos Genéticos Vegetais.
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Este estudo teve por objetivo compreender a dinâmica dos processos ecológicos e do uso das formações secundárias em Santa Catarina, destacando o seu papel como os principais remanescentes florestais da Mata Atlântica no Estado. A proposta integra métodos quantitativos e qualitativos, tendo como referência conceitual e metodológica o pensamento sistêmico e a prática sistêmica como recursos que podem auxiliar na avaliação das situações apresentadas. O trabalho envolve a caracterização do mosaico florestal em diferentes estágios de sucessão secundária, abordando aspectos da sua estrutura, composição florística e dinâmica. Esses aspectos foram também analisados à luz dos parâmetros apontados na legislação em vigor que regulamenta o uso dos ecossistemas desse bioma. Foram também estudadas as mudanças na relação dos agricultores com os recursos florestais ao longo do tempo em pequenos estabelecimentos agrícolas do Estado, com destaque para as suas motivações e expectativas sobre as possibilidades de conservação e uso das áreas florestais remanescentes. A base de dados para estes estudos foi formada a partir de inventários florestais e entrevistas com agricultores familiares em estabelecimentos agrícolas nas três tipologias florestais com ocorrência no Estado, além da análise dos pedidos de supressão de vegetação nativa disponíveis na Fundação de Meio Ambiente (Fatma). Os resultados mostraram que o uso econômico do solo foi a principal justificativa dos solicitantes para a supressão da vegetação, onde o reflorestamento com espécies exóticas foi a maior demanda (43%) dentro das 1.753 solicitações avaliadas. Foi verificada a inconsistência entre as características ecológicas dos estágios sucessionais das formações secundárias e os parâmetros legais que a atual Resolução do CONAMA aponta para defini-los. Com base nos resultados também é apontada a necessidade de normatização no processo de amostragem da vegetação, propondo-se que os inventários para fins de classificação da vegetação em estágios de regeneração incluam todos os indivíduos com DAP = 5 cm e que a Área Basal seja a principal variável analisada para essa classificação. Foram encontradas 343 espécies arbustivas e arbóreas pertencentes a 73 famílias botânicas nos 24.000 m2 de levantamento, demonstrando a importância destas formações florestais na manutenção da biodiversidade em nível de paisagem. Essa diversidade, associada ao conhecimento do ecossistema, e o potencial de uso apontado pelo agricultores entrevistados, reforça o papel das formações florestais secundárias como recursos renováveis capazes de contribuir para atender as necessidades dessas populações rurais, ao mesmo tempo em que podem ser mantidos os benefícios da sua conservação. Para que isso ocorra, existe a necessidade imediata de implementação de uma política ambiental, que promova a valorização dos remanescentes florestais nativos no Estado.

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Considerando o contexto Amazônico em que muitas decisões para a proteção e conservação do meio ambiente para a região por vezes surgem de maneira vertical, com ausência da participação dos usuários dos recursos naturais, comunitários locais, em processos deliberativos, acabando por se esquecer as experiências empíricas dessa população é que se fez este estudo. Através das técnicas metodológicas: observação direta, aplicação de entrevistas semi-estruturadas, análises de fichas de monitoramento, procurou-se observar o contexto de vida da população gurupaense, em especial àquelas que vivem às várzeas do município, consideradas agroextrativistas e que possui na atividade pesqueira fonte de proteína, renda e que de maneira compartilhada vem praticando o mecanismo do Acordo de Pesca como forma de gestão desta atividade. A pesquisa enfoca o Manejo Comunitário do Camarão seu processo de implementação e consolidação, a participação de técnicos, ONG e projetos de financiamento, bem como as implicações sociais, econômicas e ambientais nos períodos em que houve ou não a atuação dessa mediação externa. O estudo mostrou que essa participação da mediação externa estimulou processos organizativos locais bem como proporcionou a ação coletiva, em que ainda com o término do apoio, a auto-gestão comunitária vigora e é repassada às novas gerações, contudo o estudo evidencia ainda o desafio de que para melhores indicadores a níveis ambientais se faz necessário apoio técnico científico com promoção de estudos no campo da Dinâmica de Populações de Estoque Pesqueiro.
Considering the context in which many decisions Amazon to protect and conserve the environment for the region often arise vertically, with no participation of the users of natural resources, local community in decision-making processes, and end up forgetting the empirical experiences this population is that they did this study. Through the methodological techniques: direct observation, application of semi-structured interviews, analysis of monitoring data sheets, we tried to look at the context of life gurupaense, especially those living on the floodplains of the municipality, and has considered agroextractivists activity fishing source of protein, income and who has been practicing in a shared mechanism of the Fisheries Agreement as a way of managing this activity. The research focuses on the Community Management of Shrimp implementation process and consolidate the participation of experts, NGOs and financing projects, as well as the social, economic and environmental conditions in periods in which there was or not the work of that outside mediation. The study showed that participation of outside mediation stimulated organizational processes and provided the local collective action, which even with the termination of support, self-management and community force is passed on to younger generations, but the study also shows that the challenge best indicators for the environmental levels is required technical support to promote scientific research in the field of Population Dynamics of Fish Stocks.

L'agressivite des souches de colletotrichum manihotis varie d'une souche a une autre et les cultivars de manioc inocules sont plus ou moins sensibles au champignon. La temperature et la lumiere exercent une action sur l'infection des tiges. In vitro la lumiere stimule ou inhibe, selon les temperatures la croissance en longeur des hyphes et la conidiogenese. Les radiations bleues, vertes et jaunes inhibent la croissance a 32 non=c. , les radiations rouges stimulent la croissance a des temperatures comprises entre 20 et 28 non=c. La conidiogenese est inhibee a 20 non=c. Et stimulee a partir de 24 non=c, par des radiations bleues et jaunes. Les radiations rouges stimulent la condiogenese a partir de 24 non=c jusqu'a 28 non=c. Le vert est toujours stimulateur quelle que soit la temperature

Despite significant efforts have been directed toward reducing waste generation and encouraging alternative waste management strategies, landfills still remain the main option for Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) disposal in many countries. Hence, landfills and related impacts on the surroundings are still current issues throughout the world. Actually, the major concerns are related to the potential emissions of leachate and landfill gas into the environment, that pose a threat to public health, surface and groundwater pollution, soil contamination and global warming effects. To ensure environmental protection and enhance landfill sustainability, modern sanitary landfills are equipped with several engineered systems with different functions. For instance, the installation of containment systems, such as bottom liner and multi-layers capping systems, is aimed at reducing leachate seepage and water infiltration into the landfill body as well as gas migration, while eventually mitigating methane emissions through the placement of active oxidation layers (biocovers). Leachate collection and removal systems are designed to minimize water head forming on the bottom section of the landfill and consequent seepages through the liner system. Finally, gas extraction and utilization systems, allow to recover energy from landfill gas while reducing explosion and fire risks associated with methane accumulation, even though much depends on gas collection efficiency achieved in the field (range: 60-90% Spokas et al., 2006; Huitric and Kong, 2006). Hence, impacts on the surrounding environment caused by the polluting substances released from the deposited waste through liquid and gas emissions can be potentially mitigated by a proper design of technical barriers and collection/extraction systems at the landfill site. Nevertheless, the long-term performance of containment systems to limit the landfill emissions is highly uncertain and is strongly dependent on site-specific conditions such as climate, vegetative covers, containment systems, leachate quality and applied stress. Furthermore, the design and operation of leachate collection and treatment systems, of landfill gas extraction and utilization projects, as well as the assessment of appropriate methane reduction strategies (biocovers), require reliable emission forecasts for the assessment of system feasibility and to ensure environmental compliance. To this end, landfill simulation models can represent an useful supporting tool for a better design of leachate/gas collection and treatment systems and can provide valuable information for the evaluation of best options for containment systems depending on their performances under the site-specific conditions. The capability in predicting future emissions levels at a landfill site can also be improved by combining simulation models with field observations at full-scale landfills and/or with experimental studies resembling landfill conditions. Indeed, this kind of data may allow to identify the main parameters and processes governing leachate and gas generation and can provide useful information for model refinement. In view of such need, the present research study was initially addressed to develop a new landfill screening model that, based on simplified mathematical and empirical equations, provides quantitative estimation of leachate and gas production over time, taking into account for site-specific conditions, waste properties and main landfill characteristics and processes. In order to evaluate the applicability of the developed model and the accuracy of emissions forecast, several simulations on four full-scale landfills, currently in operative management stage, were carried out. The results of these case studies showed a good correspondence of leachate estimations with monthly trend observed in the field and revealed that the reliability of model predictions is strongly influenced by the quality of input data. In particular, the initial waste moisture content and the waste compression index, which are usually data not available from a standard characterisation, were identified as the key unknown parameters affecting leachate production. Furthermore, the applicability of the model to closed landfills was evaluated by simulating different alternative capping systems and by comparing the results with those returned by the Hydrological Evaluation of Landfill Performance (HELP), which is the most worldwide used model for comparative analysis of composite liner systems. Despite the simplified approach of the developed model, simulated values of infiltration and leakage rates through the analysed cover systems were in line with those of HELP. However, it should be highlighted that the developed model provides an assessment of leachate and biogas production only from a quantitative point of view. The leachate and biogas composition was indeed not included in the forecast model, as strongly linked to the type of waste that makes the prediction in a screening phase poorly representative of what could be expected in the field. Hence, for a qualitative analysis of leachate and gas emissions over time, a laboratory methodology including different type of lab-scale tests was applied to a particular waste material. Specifically, the research was focused on mechanically biologically treated (MBT) wastes which, after the introduction of the European Landfill Directive 1999/31/EC (European Commission, 1999) that imposes member states to dispose of in landfills only wastes that have been preliminary subjected to treatment, are becoming the main flow waste landfilled in new Italian facilities. However, due to the relatively recent introduction of the MBT plants within the waste management system, very few data on leachate and gas emissions from MBT waste in landfills are available and, hence, the current knowledge mainly results from laboratory studies. Nevertheless, the assessment of the leaching characteristics of MBT materials and the evaluation of how the environmental conditions may affect the heavy metals mobility are still poorly investigated in literature. To gain deeper insight on the fundamental mechanisms governing the constituents release from MBT wastes, several leaching experiments were performed on MBT samples collected from an Italian MBT plant and the experimental results were modelled to obtain information on the long-term leachate emissions. Namely, a combination of experimental leaching tests were performed on fully-characterized MBT waste samples and the effect of different parameters, mainly pH and liquid to solid ratio (L/S,) on the compounds release was investigated by combining pH static-batch test, pH dependent tests and dynamic up-flow column percolation experiments. The obtained results showed that, even though MBT wastes were characterized by relatively high heavy metals content, only a limited amount was actually soluble and thus bioavailable. Furthermore, the information provided by the different tests highlighted the existence of a strong linear correlation between the release pattern of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and several metals (Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, V, Zn), suggesting that complexation to DOC is the leaching controlling mechanism of these elements. Thus, combining the results of batch and up-flow column percolation tests, partition coefficients between DOC and metals concentration were derived. These data, coupled with a simplified screening model for DOC release, allowed to get a very good prediction of metal release during the experiments and may provide useful indications for the evaluation of long-term emissions from this type of waste in a landfill disposal scenario. In order to complete the study on the MBT waste environmental behaviour, gas emissions from MBT waste were examined by performing different anaerobic tests. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the potential gas generation capacity of wastes and to assess possible implications on gas generation resulting from the different environmental conditions expected in the field. To this end, anaerobic batch tests were performed at a wide range of water contents (26-43 %w/w up to 75 %w/w on wet weight) and temperatures (from 20-25 °C up to 55 °C) in order to simulate different landfill management options (dry tomb or bioreactor landfills). In nearly all test conditions, a quite long lag-phase was observed (several months) due to the inhibition effects resulting from high concentrations of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) and ammonia that highlighted a poor stability degree of the analysed material. Furthermore, experimental results showed that the initial waste water content is the key factor limiting the anaerobic biological process. Indeed, when the waste moisture was lower than 32 %w/w the methanogenic microbial activity was completely inhibited. Overall, the obtained results indicated that the operative conditions drastically affect the gas generation from MBT waste, in terms of both gas yield and generation rate. This suggests that particular caution should be paid when using the results of lab-scale tests for the evaluation of long-term behaviour expected in the field, where the boundary conditions change continuously and vary significantly depending on the climate, the landfill operative management strategies in place (e.g. leachate recirculation, waste disposal methods), the hydraulic characteristics of buried waste, the presence and type of temporary and final cover systems.

AbstractThe agri-food system across Europe relies heavily on migrant labour. Border lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic immobilised thousands of foreign farmworkers, giving rise to fears of labour shortages and food production losses in EU countries. Farmers’ organisations sought institutional interventions to address this labour demand. Although migrant workers have become a fundamental component of core sectors in recent decades, it is only in the current health emergency that they were recognised as ‘essential’ workers. The chapter analyses the working conditions of migrant farmworkers alongside national debates and institutional interventions in Italy and Spain during the pandemic. It provides a critical comparative analysis of legal and policy interventions to address migrants’ situations of vulnerability. Both countries depend on important contingents of EU and non-EU migrant farmworkers, especially in fruit and vegetable production; moreover, they present common aspects in supply chain dynamics and labour market policies, but also specific differences in labour, migration and social policies. Both adopted measures to face the condition of irregularity of migrant workers in order to respond to labour demand in the agri-food sector and to provide these workers with safe working and living conditions during the pandemic. However, these interventions reveal shortcomings that significantly limit their impact and outcomes, calling into question to what extent migrant workers are really considered as ‘essential’ in a long-term perspective and, therefore, to what extent the current pandemic constitutes an opportunity for a new push to enforce labour and migrant rights.

After the Assembly overhauled the currency system and issued assignats in denominations too large for retail trade, a small change shortage rocked the nation. To facilitate marketplace exchanges, the Dames, their suppliers, their clients, and other merchants turned to promissory notes. These bills were inadequately backed by local financial societies and contributed to rapid inflation. Beginning in 1790, the lack of practical cash spurred market actors to innovatively ally across guilds and occupational boundaries. Vegetable merchants formed coalitions with carpenters to demand new assignat denominations, retailers joined forces with brokers to protect promissory notes, and clients and merchants rallied to support overlapping credit networks. Thus, the Dames and their allies forged novel socioeconomic associations before the Le Chapelier law and d’Allarde decree legally dismantled the corporate world in 1791. Money thus became a concrete conduit for effecting the core social transformations at the heart of the Revolution. While spurring the state to protect the monetary networks of productive citizens, the Dames and their allies also changed the trajectory of national currency reform.

This essay examines the persistent trope of ‘tropical degeneration’ in Arturo Burga Freitas’s Mal de gente (1943). Set in the Peruvian Amazon, the novel is the story of a young European, Edmund Rice, who, like a number of protagonists of the contemporaneous Spanish American novela de la selva, travels to the region for the purposes of work and ends up settling permanently in the jungle. The natural world depicted in Burga Freitas’s book is a zone of exploitation, characterised by the European plundering of tropical products, chiefly rubber. Yet countering this assessment of nature is the native Amazonian view of the jungle as an animate force, capable of enchanting outsiders and reducing them to a kind of vegetable state. This article explores how the idea of ‘going native’ is redefined and redeployed in Mal de gente to counter discourses of nature as an economic resource. Drawing on the work of Philippe Descola and Eduardo Vivieros de Castro, among others, this essay shows that, far from being a negative condition, the ‘degeneration’ of Burga Frieta’s protagonist is a corrective to the over-exploitation of the Amazon and a recognition of the profound interconnectedness of man and the natural world.

This chapter situates William Earle’s 1800 novel Obi within a network of texts—including histories, natural histories, poems, and travel narratives—that surface the novel’s engagement with the profitable business of botanical transplantation which, at the turn into the nineteenth century, depended on connections between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Earle aligns human bodies with plants in order to represent the slave trade as a destructive form of transplantation and amputation. Drawing from Erasmus Darwin’s poem Botanic Garden, the novel Obi advances a “vegetable economy” in which revolution is a natural, botanical response to the violent transplantation project of the Atlantic slave trade. The surprisingly transoceanic and political life of plants during this period therefore forms the backdrop for the novel’s anti-slavery argument, which aligns human bodies with the bodies of plants and understands plantation slavery in terms of botanical transplantation.

Just like infrastructure construction, land reclamation, and rural settlement, conversions from the animate to the inanimate, from living plant or animal to commodified resource were activities that offer insight into the political ecology of empire. The first of two chapters that focus on Turkestan as a commodity frontier, Chapter 4 considers the commodification of Central Asian nature by the state, settlers, and local communities. In doing so, it briefly discusses Turkestan’s famed ‘white gold’—cotton—but also looks at far broader contours of commodities including minerals, fruit, cereal, and vegetable crops. Exploring the social, political, and economic capital located in these resources, the chapter considers ideas about ‘abundance’, ‘value’, ‘tribute’, and ‘surplus’, and varied readings of resources by imperial actors, often external to Turkestan, who sought material recompense for the expenses of military conquest and budget deficits. Looking beyond the sale and transport of resources, however, towards the local display of commodities at exhibitions reveals that the afterlives of animals and plants were embedded in a range of conversations beyond imperial economic interest, becoming touchstones for assertions of regional agency, identity, enrichment, and community that often cut across settler and Central Asian societies.

Current energy policies tend to encourage the production of renewable energy for environmental reasons and energy independence. Among renewable sources, biomass can play a key role, because of economic, environmental and political factors, such as the need to diversify and improve energy supply, reduce the greenhouse effect and support rural areas. For the case of liquid biofuels derived from agricultural crops, several possibilities can be considered, such as straight vegetable oil (SVO), oil-derived esters, bioethanol or blends with conventional fuels (diesel or gasoline). The use of SVOs and their derivatives usually poses some problems, that essentially derive from their much higher viscosity and higher boiling temperature. In order to evaluate the technical feasibility of the use of SVOs within gas turbine combustors, this paper reports the results of the experimental characterization of different vegetable oils, derived from dedicated crops. Moreover, blends composed of diesel and vegetable oil in different concentrations (from pure diesel to pure vegetable oil) are also considered and their experimental characterization is also reported, with particular focus on blend viscosity. The considered vegetable oils were obtained from different types of oilseeds (rapeseed, sunflower, soybean) and were cultivated under different agronomic scenarios. The SVO properties determined experimentally are SVO elemental composition, lower heating value, density, specific heat and viscosity, for which this paper provides a practical overview, coming both from experiments and literature data.

The article gives brief information on inventorying of some crop wild relatives in the forest ecosystems of different soil-climatic zones of Republic of Moldova, and collection of accessions of the local forms of cultivated plants on farms. It was found that natural populations of 5 pilot species – wild cherry, wild pear, cornelian cherry, wild apple and hazelnut are degrading under the influence of envi-ronmental stresses. It is noted that the range of social-economic and political factors of the past 60-70 years has led to significant genetic erosion of the local gene pool of agricultural crops. Elaboration of the effective methods for in situ conservation of agrobiodiversity will facilitate the greening of agricultural production and introduction of the elements of sustainable agriculture.

Hydrotreated Vegetable Oils (HVO) and Hydoprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids (HEFA) are premium quality biofuels that are produced via hydrotreatment of renewable (waste) feedstocks from vegetable and animal origin. HVO/HEFA production is increasing rapidly worldwide and this is supported by several growth drivers. HVO/HEFA has a better functionality compared to classical biodiesel based on fatty acid methyl esters (FAME)  and it is fully compatible with mineral diesel. HVO/HEFA fractions can also be used as sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). All major (European) airlines have recently announced that they will start using increasing volumes of SAF on voluntary basis in anticipation of a future compulsory SAF proportion. Initially, HVO was mainly produced from food-grade oils (e.g. palm oil, soybean oil). However for sustainability but also economical & political reasons, producers are increasingly looking for alternative (lower quality – non food) feedstocks such as UCO, waste animal fats, by-products from edible/technical oil refining, distillation pitches and even non-glyceride feedstocks. Independent of the applied technology, all HVO feedstocks need to be pre-treated before they can enter the hydrotreatment process. Specific pre-treated feedstock specifications depend on the HVO technology provider. In general, the pre-treatment is necessary to remove impurities such as P and metals but also nitrogen and chlorine containing components in order to increase the HVO catalyst life time and to avoid corrosion problems in the plant. Pre-treatment of ‘good quality’ feedstocks (vegetable oils, used cooking oils, some animal fats) is pretty straightforward and can be accomplished by a series of processes that are already known from the edible oil refining processes. Proper pre-treatment of lower quality feedstocks is much more challenging and requires a more complex, multi-stage process that consists of a series of dedicated unit operations. HVO/HEFA producers are very interested in such efficient pre-treatment processes as their availability and industrial applicability will finally determine if/to which extend a given low quality feedstock can be used which will directly impact the economical viability of their HVO plant.