This paper analyzes the economic effects of agricultural price and merchandise trade policies around the world as of 2004 on global markets, net farm incomes, and national and regional economic welfare and poverty, using the global economy wide Linkage model, new estimates of agricultural price distortions for developing countries, and poverty elasticity's approach. It addresses two questions: to what extent are policies as of 2004 still reducing rewards from farming in developing countries and thereby adding to inequality across countries in farm household incomes? Are they depressing value added more in primary agriculture than in the rest of the economy of developing countries, and earnings of unskilled workers more than of owners of other factors of production, thereby potentially contributing to inequality and poverty within developing countries (given that farm incomes are well below non-farm incomes in most developing countries and that agriculture there is intensive in the use of unskilled labor)? Results are presented for the key countries and regions of the world and for the world as a whole. They reveal that, by moving to free markets, income inequality between countries will be reduced at least slightly, all but one-sixth of the gains to developing countries will come from agricultural policy reform, unskilled workers in developing countries the majority of whom work on farms will benefit most from reform, net farm incomes in developing countries will rise by 6 percent compared with 2 percent for non-agricultural value added, and the number of people surviving on less than US$1 a day will drop 3 percent globally.
Policies that enable rural communities to participate in expanding economic opportunities can be central to inclusive growth in Myanmar. Rural communities are home to the majority of Myanmar's population, the majority of its many ethnic groups, and 70 percent of its poor. Development in rural areas is constrained by low returns to agriculture, and significantly lower levels of public service delivery and human development outcomes relative to urban areas. Reforms to enhance agriculture productivity are necessary though not sufficient for improving the welfare and livelihoods of rural communities. These have to be complemented with increased access to social and economic services that can raise human and physical capacity to create the conditions necessary for the growth of a dynamic rural non-farm sector. These reforms could help to not only reduce the drag on rural growth and poverty reduction, but also contribute to structural economic transformation so that the welfare of all people in Myanmar can grow together.
El papel de los suelos agrícolas está cobrando en los últimos años una importante relevancia social y gubernamental. Los suelos agrícolas han dejado de considerarse como meros soportes de plantas que producen alimentos y materias primas de diversa índole para ser considerados como un elemento central en la provisión de servicios ecosistémicos y en la mitigación del cambio climático. El área Mediterránea se caracteriza por la vulnerabilidad y a la vez resiliencia de los ecosistemas que en ella se establecen. Esto la sitúa en un espacio clave ante las modificaciones que se derivan del cambio climático, como son el incremento de las temperaturas y el descenso de las precipitaciones. El olivar, como elemento característico de la cuenca mediterránea, tiene por delante el reto de conjugar unas cosechas estables y rentables para el agricultor con un manejo sostenible a largo plazo. Este reto es de especial importancia en Andalucía donde el olivar ocupa el 46% de las tierras de cultivo, forma parte ancestral de su cultura y su influencia social y económica traspasa con diferencia a la de cualquier otro cultivo. Las prácticas de manejo de suelo asociadas a los cultivos son esenciales en la determinación de la capacidad del suelo para aportar servicios ecosistémicos. En este sentido, esta Tesis Doctoral se ha centrado en la evaluación de diferentes técnicas de manejo predominantes en olivar andaluz y el impacto que generan en las diferentes propiedades del suelo, prestando especial atención a su influencia en el secuestro y almacenamiento de carbono. Además, esta evaluación se ha realizado en diferentes intervalos de tiempo (corto y largo plazo) analizando parámetros físicos y químicos de perfiles completos de suelo con profundidades aproximadas de 120 cm. Con ello se ha podido constatar la importancia de los horizontes profundos en las dinámicas de almacenamiento de carbono, puesto que en el área de estudio estos horizontes se acumulan aproximadamente el 50% del carbono orgánico del suelo. Conjuntamente con este análisis en profundidad, se ha determinado la influencia de la topografía y las fracciones de agregados en la distribución y secuestro de carbono. El manejo del olivar en Andalucía se caracteriza principalmente por prácticas que implican el mantenimiento del suelo desnudo a lo largo del año. Estas prácticas implican un laboreo continuo y la aplicación de herbicidas (CT) o la ausencia de laboreo y el uso de herbicidas de pre y post emergencia (NT+H) para evitar la proliferación de flora arvense. Como consecuencia del uso de estas técnicas de manejo en el largo plazo (15 años) se ha podido comprobar un importante proceso de descarbonización de los suelos de olivar estudiados, con pérdidas en el stock de carbono que alcanzan los 28 Mg ha-1 en ambos manejos. Estos resultados sitúan a estos suelos lejos de cumplir los objetivos de incremento de carbono orgánico en los suelos agrícolas propuestos por la Iniciativa 4‰. Similar tendencia se ha registrado en el stock de nitrógeno con pérdidas de 6,2 Mg ha-1 para el laboreo convencional y 8,5 Mg ha-1 para el no laboreo con herbicidas. Relacionado con este proceso de pérdida de fertilidad estos manejos han arrojado importantes tasas de erosión, baja estabilidad estructural y pérdidas en la capacidad productiva de los suelos. Una de las principales diferencias observadas entre ambos manejos se constató en la capacidad de infiltración. En el manejo NT+H se encontró un importante descenso en las ratios de infiltración con respecto al manejo CT. Esto fue relacionado con la formación de encostramiento superficial que limita la entrada de agua en el suelo y favorece los procesos de escorrentía. La principal alternativa a estos manejos predominantes es la inclusión de cubiertas vegetales en las calles del olivar. En los dos años de evaluación, este sistema de manejo del suelo se ha mostrado como una técnica sostenible, con capacidad para reducir las tasas de erosión e incrementar las entradas de carbono en el suelo en algunas posiciones topográficas, con lo que puede influir positivamente en la calidad de los suelos a la vez que incrementa la productividad de los suelos de olivar. Sin embargo, en suelos deteriorados, en secano y con las condiciones climáticas estudiadas, la mejora de las propiedades edáficas es un proceso lento, desigual y fácilmente reversible. Esto se debe a que el desarrollo de la cubierta vegetal bajo estas condiciones no es sencillo pudiendo quedar en una vegetación poco desarrollada con escasa cobertura y generación de biomasa. Además, con la supresión del laboreo en este manejo también se cuantificó un descenso en la capacidad de infiltración de agua en el suelo, con lo que esto puede ser un importante hándicap para la instalación de este manejo, debido a un menor almacenamiento de agua en un medio con periodos constantes de déficit hídrico. En conclusión, los resultados de esta Tesis muestran que el uso técnicas de manejo con suelo desnudo ha conducido a un deterioro en las propiedades de los suelos de olivar del área de estudio, afectando a la calidad de los suelos, poniendo en cuestionamiento su papel como facilitador de servicios ecosistémicos. La inclusión de cubiertas vegetales ha supuesto un cambio en esta tendencia, abriendo un camino hacia la regeneración de los suelos que debe constatarse en el largo plazo y donde la relación entre la cubierta y la disponibilidad de agua juegan un papel clave en el éxito de implementación de este manejo. ; The role of agricultural soils has acquired important social and governmental relevance in recent years. Agricultural soils are no longer considered as mere supports for plants that produce food and materials of diverse types, but nowadays as a central element in the ecosystem services provision and climate change mitigation. The Mediterranean area is characterized by the vulnerability and resilience of its ecosystems. This situates it as a key area in the context of the variations resulting from climate change, such as higher temperatures and lower rainfall. The olive grove, as a representative element of the Mediterranean basin, faces the challenge of combining stable and profitable harvests for the farmer with long-term sustainable management. This challenge is particularly importance in Andalusia, where olive groves represent 46% of the cultivated land, is an ancient part of its culture, and their social and economic influence surpasses widely any other crop. Soil management practices associated with crops are essential in determining the soil's capacity to provide ecosystem services. In this sense, this PhD Thesis has focused on the evaluation of different management techniques predominant in Andalusian olive groves and the impact generate on different soil properties, with special attention to their influence on carbon sequestration and storage. In addition, this assessment has been carried out at different time intervals (short and long term) by analyzing physical and chemical parameters of complete soil profiles at depths of approximately 120 cm. This has confirmed the relevance of the deep horizons in the dynamics of carbon storage, since in the study area these horizons accumulate approximately 50% of the organic carbon in the soil. In combination with this in-depth analysis, the influence of topography and aggregate fractions on the distribution and sequestration of carbon has been determined. Olive orchard management in Andalusia is mainly characterized by practices involving the maintenance of bare soil throughout the year. These practices imply continuous tillage and the application of herbicides (CT) or the absence of tillage and the use of pre- and postemergence herbicides (NT+H) to prevent arvense flora proliferation. As a consequence of the use of these management techniques in the long term (15 years), a significant decarbonization process has been observed in the studied olive grove soils, with losses in the carbon stock of 28 Mg ha-1 in both managements. These results show that these soils are soils far from meeting the objectives of increasing organic carbon in agricultural soils proposed by the 4‰ Initiative. A similar trend has been registered in the nitrogen stock with losses of 6.2 Mg ha-1 for conventional tillage and 8.5 Mg ha-1 for no-tillage with herbicides. Related to this process of loss in the fertility levels, these management practices have resulted in significant erosion rates, low structural stability and losses in the productive capacity of the soils. The main difference observed between the two management systems was observed in the infiltration capacity. A significant decrease in infiltration rates was found in the NT+H management compared to the CT management. This was related to the formation of surface crusting which limits the entry of water into the soil and promotes runoff processes. The main alternative to these predominant management systems is the inclusion of vegetation covers in the olive grove alleys. In the two years of evaluation, this soil management system has been shown to be a sustainable technique, with the capacity to reduce erosion rates and increase soil carbon inputs in some topographic positions, thus positively influencing soil quality and increasing the productivity of olive grove soils. However, in deteriorated, rainfed soils and under the climatic conditions studied, the improvement of soil properties is a slow, uneven and easily reversible process. This is because the development of plant cover under these conditions is not easy and can result in poorly developed vegetation with little cover and biomass generation. In addition, with the elimination of tillage in this management, a decrease in the soil's water infiltration capacity was also quantified, which could be an important handicap for the installation of this management, due to a lower water storage in an environment with constant periods of water deficit. In conclusion, the results of this thesis show that the use of bare soil management techniques has led to a deterioration in the properties of the olive grove soils in the study area, affecting soil quality and putting into question its role as a facilitator of ecosystem services. The inclusion of vegetation cover has changed this trend, opening a way towards soil regeneration that must be verified in the long term and where the relationship between cover and water availability plays a key role in the successful implementation of this management.
Article Details: Received: 2018-04-09 | Accepted: 2018-10-08 | Available online: 2018-09-31https://doi.org/10.15414/afz.2018.21.03.84-92This experiment was carried out at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Teaching and Research farm during the late and early planting seasons of 2011 and 2012 to determine the efficacy of Moringa oleifera(L) and Anacardium occidentales(L) extracts on major insect pests of pests of watermelon and their effects on fatty acid compound of watermelon. This experiment was arranged in a randomized complete block design and each treatment was replicated three times. Each of the plant extracts was applied at three different concentrations (5, 10 and 20%). Gas chromatography was used to determine the level of fatty acid composition.The results clearly showed that the applied plant extracts exhibited insecticidal action against the Aulocophora africana (Weise) and Dacus cucurbitae(Coquillet). 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Several decades of intensive dryland-farming in the Gadarif Region, located in the Eastern part of Sudan, has led to rapid landuse/landcover (LULC) changes mainly due to agricultural expansion, government policies and environmental calamities such as drought. The study area represents part of the African Sahel. The fundamental goal of the thesis was to assess land degradation and the impact of agriculture expansion on land cover, soil and crops production. To analyse and to monitor the LULC changes, multi-temporal Landsat data of the years 1979, 1989 and 1999 and ASTER data of the year 2009 covering an area of approximately 1200 km² were used. For this a post-classification comparison technique was applied to detect LULC changes from satellite images. Six LULC classes were identified during the classification scheme, namely cultivated land, fallow land, woodland, bare land, settlement and water. For the four dates of satellite images the overall classification accuracy ranged from 86 % to 92 %. During the three decades of the study period an extensive change of LULC patterns occurred. The cultivated areas increased significantly, covering 81 % of the previous woodland in the period 1979 – 2009. Fallow land only increased during the period 1989 – 1999. Over the three decades, urban expansion continuously increased covering an area of 23, 21 and 27 km² for the periods 1979 – 1989, 1989 – 1999 and 1999 – 2009 respectively. The detailed LULC map of the study area was obtained by using a dual polarisation (HH and HV) TerraSAR-X data of the year 2009. The different LULCs of the study area were analysed by employing an object-oriented classification approach. For that purpose, multi-resolution segmentation of the Definiens Software was used for creating the image objects. Using the feature-space optimisation tool the attributes of the TerraSAR-X images were optimised in order to obtain the best separability among classes for the LULC mapping. In addition to the classes that have been obtained by the optical data, the following LULCs resulted from SAR data: harvested land, rock, settlement 1 (local-roof buildings) and settlement 2 (concrete roof buildings). The backscattering coefficients for some classes were different along HH and HV polarisation. The best separation distance of the tested spectral, shape and textural features showed different variations among the discriminated LULC classes. An overall accuracy of 84 % with a kappa value of 0.82 was resulted from the classification scheme. Accuracy differences among the classes were kept minimal. For more than six decades in the Gadarif Region mechanised dryland farming is practised. As a result, due to continuous conventional tillage, extensive woodcutting and over-grazing, serious soil degradation occurred. To discuss the impact of LULC changes on the selected soil properties, three main LULC types were chosen to be investigated, namely: cultivated land, fallow land and woodland. In addition to the reference soil profiles, soil samples were also collected at two depths from ten sample plots for each of the LULC type. For these soil samples, various soil properties such as texture, bulk density (BD), organic matter (OM), soil pH, electrical conductivity (EC), sodium adsorption ratio (SoAR), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K) were analysed. Laboratory tests proved that soil properties were significantly affected by LULC changes. Within the different LULC types, clay content in the surface layers (0 – 5 and 5 – 15 cm) varied from 59 % to 65 %, whereas silt fractions ranged from 27 % to 37 %. Soil BD, OM and P were significantly different (p < 0·05) across the three LULC types. Soil pH was significantly different between cultivated land and woodland on one side and between fallow land and woodland on the other side. EC and SoAR values of fallow land were found to be significantly different (p < 0·05) from woodland. The dryland vertisol of the Gadarif Region in Sudan produced more than one-third of the national production of sorghum – the main food stuff in the country. Soil compaction has been recognised as one of the major problems in crop production worldwide. Soil strength and infiltration rate are important variables for understanding and predicting the soil processes. The effects of three different landuse systems (cultivated land, fallow land and woodland) on soil compaction and infiltration rate were investigated at two sites of the study area. Site 1 represents the older one of the two. The soil penetration resistance (SPR) was measured in three depths using a manually operated cone penetrometer. Infiltration rate was measured in the field using a double-ring infiltrometer. Following the cone-penetrometer sampling, soil samples were collected to determine the variables that affect SPR and infiltration rate vs. particle size, dry BD, volumetric moisture content (VMC) and organic carbon (OC) content. Field measurements and soil samples were collected for each landuse type. The measured infiltration rate data were inserted into the Kostiakov Model in order to predict the cumulative soil water infiltration. Soil compaction for the cultivated land was 65 % larger in comparison to woodland. Woodland areas showed an increase in the infiltration rate by 87 % and 74 % compared to cultivated and fallow land respectively. Both study sites showed an increase in the dry BD when SPR is increasing, while VMC decreases with increasing SPR. Also, low OC contents were observed to be associated with high SPR values. For Site 1 the average coefficient of determination (R²) for the infiltration data fit to the Kostiakov Model were 0.65, 0.73 and 0.84 for cultivated land, fallow land and woodland respectively. However, for Site 2 they were 0.63, 0.76 and 0.78. In the Gadarif Region agriculture is the main activity and practised in many forms with a variety of environmental effects and consequences. Continuous ploughing of the cultivated land coupled with inproper soil management has contributed to soil deterioration when the landuse changed from woodland to cultivated and fallow land. Therefore, the development of sustainable landuse practises in the dryland-farming of the study area need to be improved in order to reduce the amount of soil degradation in the future. ; Mehrere Jahrzehnte intensiven Trockenfeldbaus in der Region von Gadarif, welche sich im östlichen Teil des Sudans befindet, führten hauptsächlich aufgrund von landwirtschaftlicher Expansion, politischen Beschlüssen der Regierung und Naturkatastrophen wie Trockenheit zu einer raschen Veränderung der Landnutzung und Landbedeckung. Das wesentliche Ziel dieser Dissertation war es, die Degradation des Landes, sowie die Auswirkungen von landwirtschaftlicher Expansion auf die Landbedeckung, den Boden und den Pflanzenbau im Untersuchungsgebiet, welches Teile der afrikanischen Sahelzone beinhaltet, abzuschätzen. Zur Analyse und Beobachtung der Veränderungen der Landnutzung und Landbedeckung wurden multi-temporale Landsat-Daten der Jahre 1979, 1989 und 1999 sowie ASTER-Daten aus dem Jahr 2009 genutzt, welche eine Fläche von schätzungsweise 1200 km² abdecken. Um Veränderungen von Landnutzung und Landbedeckung aus Satellitenbilddaten zu bestimmen, wurde ein auf Post-Klassifikation basierendes Vergleichsverfahren angewandt. Sechs Landnutzungs- und Landbedeckungsklassen, welche die Namen bewirtschaftetes Land, brach liegendes Land, Waldgebiet, Ödland, besiedeltes Land und Wasserfläche tragen, wurden während des Klassifikationsprozesses bestimmt. Für die vier Aufnahmezeitpunkte der Satellitendaten lag die allgemeine Klassifikationsgenauigkeit zwischen 86 % und 92 %. Während des dreißigjährigen Untersuchungszeitraums fand eine beträchtliche Veränderung der Landnutzungs- und Landbedeckungsstruktur statt. Bewirtschaftete Flächen nahmen in ihrem Anteil signifikant zu und bedeckten innerhalb des Zeitraums von 1979 bis 2009 81 % der früheren Waldgebiete. Der Anteil von brach liegendem Land nahm lediglich während des Zeitraums von 1989 bis 1999 zu. Besiedelte Gebiete breiteten sich über die drei Jahrzehnte kontinuierlich aus und wuchsen innerhalb des Zeitraums von 1979 bis 1989 um eine Fläche von 23 km², sowie um 21 km² zwischen 1989 und 1999 und um 27 km² in dem Zeitabschnitt 1999 – 2009. Eine detaillierte Karte zur Landnutzung und Landbedeckung des Untersuchungsgebiets wurde mittels der Nutzung dual polarisierter (HH und HV) TerraSAR-X Daten aus dem Jahr 2009 erzeugt. Die verschiedenen Landnutzungen und Landbedeckungen im Beobachtungsgelände wurden durch die Anwendung eines objektorientierten Klassifikationsansatzes analysiert. Um Bildobjekte zu erzeugen, wurde für diesen Zweck die auf einer mehrfachen Auflösung basierende Segmentierung der Software Definiens genutzt. Das Werkzeug Feature Space Optimisation wurde für die Optimierung der Attribute der TerraSAR-X Bilder angewandt, damit eine ideale Unterscheidungsfähigkeit entlang der Klassen für die Kartierung der Landnutzungen und Landbedeckungen erreicht werden kann. Zusätzlich zu jenen Klassen, welche mittels optischer Daten abgeleitet wurden, ergaben sich aus SAR-Daten noch die nachfolgenden Landnutzungen und Landbedeckungen: Abgeerntetes Land, Fels, Besiedlung 1 (Gebäude mit landestypischer Bedachung) und Besiedlung 2 (Gebäude mit Betondach). Die Koeffizienten der Rückstreuung entlang der Polarisationen HH und HV waren für einige Klassen unterschiedlich. Der günstigste Trennungsabstand der getesteten spektralen, formgebenden und texturalen Features ergab verschiedene Abweichungen zwischen den bestimmten Klassen der Landnutzung und Landbedeckung. Die Klassifikationsmaßnahmen ergaben eine Gesamtgenauigkeit von 84 % mit einem Kappa-Wert von 0.82. Genauigkeitsunterschiede entlang der Klassen wurden minimal gehalten. Seit über sechs Jahrzehnten wird in der Region Gadarif maschinenbetriebener Trockenfeldbau ausgeübt. In Folge dessen fand eine beträchtliche Abholzung und Überweidung sowie eine schwerwiegende Bodendegradation aufgrund des stetigen konventionellen Feldbaus statt. Um die Auswirkungen der Veränderung von Landnutzung und Landbedeckung auf die ausgewählten Bodenbeschaffenheiten auszuwerten, wurden drei Haupttypen der Landnutzung und Landbedeckung für die weitere Untersuchung ausgewählt: Bewirtschaftetes Land, brach liegendes Land, und Waldgebiet. Zusätzlich zu den Referenzbodenprofilen wurden außerdem für jeden Landnutzungs- und Landbedeckungstyp auf je zehn Probeflächen Bodenproben in zwei Tiefen entnommen. Bei diesen Bodenproben wurden zahlreiche Bodeneigenschaften analysiert, wie etwa Textur, Bodendichte (BD), organischer Materialgehalt (OM), pH-Wert des Bodens, elektrische Leitfähigkeit (EC), Adsorptionsgeschwindigkeit von Natrium (SoAR), Phosphorgehalt (P) sowie Kaliumgehalt (K). Labortests ergaben, dass die Bodeneigenschaften signifikant durch die Veränderungen der Landnutzung und Landbedeckung beeinflusst werden. Innerhalb der verschiedenen Landnutzungs- und Landbedeckungstypen variierte der Tongehalt in den Deckschichten (0 – 5 cm und 5 – 15 cm) zwischen 59 % und 65 %, wohin gegen sich die Lehmanteile von 27 % bis 37 % bewegten. Bodendichte, organischer Materialgehalt und Phosphorgehalt zeigten signifikant unterschiedliche Werte bei den drei Typen der Landnutzung und Landbedeckung (p < 0.05). Der pH-Wert des Bodens war signifikant verschieden zwischen bewirtschaftetem Land und Waldgebiet zum einen, und zwischen brach liegendem Land und Waldgebiet zum anderen. Die Werte der elektrischen Leitfähigkeit und der Adsorptionsgeschwindigkeit von Natrium bei brach liegendem Land erwiesen sich als maßgeblich verschieden zu jenen von Waldgebieten (p < 0.05). Auf dem Trockenland-Vertisolboden der Region Gadarif im Sudan wurde mehr als ein Drittel der nationalen Hirseproduktion erwirtschaftet – dem Haupternährungserzeugnis des Landes. Bodenverdichtung erwies sich als eines der weltweiten Hauptprobleme für den Pflanzenbau. Bodenfestigkeit und Versickerungsrate sind wichtige Variabeln, um Bodenprozesse verstehen und vorhersagen zu können. Die Auswirkungen der drei verschiedenen Landnutzungssysteme (bewirtschaftetes Land, brach liegendes Land und Waldgebiet) auf die Bodenverdichtung und Versickerungsrate wurden an zwei Standorten im Beobachtungsgebiet untersucht. Standort 1 ist der ältere der beiden. Der Widerstand der Bodenpenetration (SPR) wurde in drei Tiefen durch eine manuell angewandte Rammsonde gemessen. Mittels der Nutzung eines Doppelring-Infiltrometers ist die Versickerungsrate im Feld gemessen worden. Im Anschluss an die Probenentnahme mittels Rammsonden wurden Bodenproben gesammelt, um jene Variabeln bestimmen zu können, welche den Widerstand der Bodenpenetration sowie der Versickerungsrate im Vergleich zur Partikelgröße, zur trockenen Bodendichte, zum volumetrischen Feuchtigkeitsgehalt (VMC) und zum organischen Karbongehalt (OC) beeinflussen. Für jeden Landnutzungstypen wurden Feldmessungen durchgeführt und Bodenproben entnommen. Die gemessenen Daten der Versickerungsrate wurden in das Kostiakov-Modell eingespeist, um die gesamte Bodenwasserversickerung vorhersagen zu können. Die Bodenverdichtung bei bewirtschaftetem Land war 65 % stärker als bei Waldgebiet. Für Waldgebietsflächen wurde eine Zunahme der Versickerungsrate um 87 % verglichen mit bewirtschaftetem Land und um 74 % im Vergleich zu brach liegendem Land aufgezeigt. Beide Untersuchungsstandorte zeigten eine Zunahme in der trockenen Bodendichte für den Fall, dass der Widerstand der Bodenpenetration zunimmt, während der volumetrische Feuchtigkeitsgehalt mit zunehmendem Bodenpenetrationswiderstand abnimmt. Ebenso wurde beobachtet, dass ein geringer organischer Karbongehalt in Verbindung zu hohen Widerstandswerten der Bodenpenetration steht. Bei Standort 1 passte der durchschnittliche Bestimmungskoeffizient (R²) der Versickerungsrate zum Kostiakov-Modell mit den Werten 0.65 für bewirtschaftetes Land, 0.73 für brach liegendes Land und 0.84 für Waldgebiet. Für Standort 2 indessen ergaben die Werte 0.63, 0.76 und 0.78. Landwirtschaft, die in vielen Formen ausgeübt wird, ist die Haupttätigkeit in der Region Gadarif, und geht mit verschiedenartigsten Umweltauswirkungen und Konsequenzen einher. Kontinuierliche Feldbestellung des bewirtschafteten Landes, verbunden mit ungeeigneter Bodenbewirtschaftung, hat sich seit jenem Zeitpunkt, als sich die Landnutzung von Waldgebiet zu bewirtschaftetem und brach liegendem Land änderte, zu Bodenschädigung geführt. Daher muss die Entwicklung nachhaltiger Landnutzungspraktiken beim Trockenfeldbau im Untersuchungsgebiet verbessert werden, damit in Zukunft der Umfang der Bodendegradation verringert werden kann.
The purpose of this report is to inform practitioners on gender dynamics in Bolivia as they relate to natural resource management and climate change. This is done to provide new knowledge for mainstreaming gender into rural development projects. The aim is to go beyond general gender assumptions and provide more detailed empirical knowledge on differentiated gender roles and the relative access of women and men to resources. The report will demonstrate that women and men in rural Bolivia have many different roles and opportunities, which are not equally distributed. The paper will also show that these roles are changing as a result of both general development trends and climate change. Further, evidence demonstrates that women and men experience vulnerability and adapt to climate change differently. As a result, rural development and adaptation strategies should integrate the relative capacities of women and men and respond to their particular needs. This will help avoid counterproductive out comes that widen gender gaps and allow for more sustainable, pro-poor rural development. This report will begin by introducing the methodology and case study regions. It will then examine in detail the specific roles of women and men in rural Bolivia. Next it will look at the gendered access to and control over resources and how gender roles, access and control are changing as a result of climate change. The report will finish with some general conclusions and specific recommendations for development practitioners in rural Bolivia.
The objective of this study is to evaluate the World Bank Group's (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development [IBRD], International Development Association [IDA], and International Finance Corporation [IFC]) effectiveness in promoting growth in agricultural productivity in Azerbaijan, and to derive lessons that may be relevant for the World Bank Group's future engagement in Azerbaijani agriculture. The study covers the World Bank's entire agricultural lending and analytical portfolio, and the full period of the Bank's involvement with Azerbaijan's rural sector, commencing in 1997 when the first agricultural project was launched, to 2010. The report begins (section one) with an overview of agriculture's role in Azerbaijan's economy, the strategic need for increased agricultural growth and the technical, economic and policy constraints impeding growth. Section two reviews the Bank's lending program and analytical work, and considers the appropriate balance between lending and analytical activities. Section three assesses the Bank's impact on agricultural productivity, and section four considers how environmental management, social welfare and agricultural growth can be mutually complementary. Section five and six reviews cross-cutting aspects of the Bank's work in Azerbaijan's agriculture sector, including the Bank's effectiveness as an innovator and as a partner with the government in agricultural reform. And section seven assesses the impact of the Bank's own institutional structure and practices on its operational effectiveness promoting agricultural productivity. Concluding the report, Section 8 highlights the main areas where the Bank could have had greater impact on the country's agricultural productivity, and the lessons thereby emerging for the Bank's agricultural role in Azerbaijan in future years.
Weather is the term used to describe the atmospheric conditions (heat, wetness, wind, etc.) prevailing at any one place and time. Climate is the sum of the prevailing weather conditions of a given place over a period of time, typically summed over many decades. This paper seeks to provide strategic directions for mainstreaming support for climate change within the World Bank's broader program of assistance to Vietnam. It does so by reviewing the current understanding of climate change in Vietnam and likely impacts, outlining principles to guide the Bank's engagement in this field, and applying these principles across a range of sectors, taking into account both near- and longer-term considerations. The report identifies elements of the Bank's current and planned portfolio of projects and analytical work that are contributing or will contribute to improved knowledge, planning, and actions, and it points to additional areas where new or more work seems warranted. The report represents a first iteration of a strategy for supporting Vietnam in managing the challenges posed by climate change. As more experience is gathered and as our understanding of both the science and the economics of climate change impacts in Vietnam improves, this strategy will need to be revisited and refined. While the process of climate change is expected to be a long-term phenomenon-with predictions for considerable changes through the second half of the twenty-first century, the focus of this report is on decisions and priorities that should govern the Bank's assistance during this decade. Given an array of uncertainties, extending the developing assistance planning vision much beyond 2020 is not practical. This time frame also corresponds to the government of Vietnam's own planning horizon.
Actual importance of research theme: Combating hunger and providing the Earth's population with sufficient amount of products is considered one of the strategic priorities of human civilization sustainable development by the UN up to 2030. The rapid growth of this planet's human population in the 21st century, estimated at 7.6. billion people, leads to the global demand for production and foodstuff. Simultaneously, traditional strategies of extensive development conventional in the 20th century and "target" intensification of agriculture do not take expected positive effect nowadays. World economy requires for new strategies of agricultural production, as well as promoting 'green revolution' based on the ground of IT technology advances and "Industry 4.0.". The generalization of world experience concerning development and implementing agricultural production strategies in the 21st century is of greater theoretical and practical importance for all countries which export agricultural production in mass scales, including Ukraine which focuses on the leadership in the world agricultural business. Thus, the urgency of the issue confirms the actual importance of this article. The problem statement. Foodstuff output in world economy is growing slowly and does not meet the increasing demand for food and agricultural products in industry in global scales. Under these conditions the manufacturers of agricultural products like farmers, agro-businesses and agro-holdings, as well as transnational corporation alter and modify agricultural strategies that were conventional in the 20th century. Among the new strategies transition to precision farming and innovational agriculture based on implementing IT technologies takes the leading role. The core and socio-economic consequences of such strategy implementation require further study. Analysis of latest studies and publication. The important contribution to the study of the core and dimensions of agricultural production strategies linked to innovation and investment development as well as to improvement property relations is made by such Ukrainian scholars as P. Makarenko, V. Pilyavskiy [1] and O. Shul'ga [2]. Foreign scientists like Smaller, C., andW. Speller, withH. Mirza, N. Bernasconi-Osterwalder, andG. Dixie [3] paid the specific attention to the study of strategic priorities concerning risks minimization and profit maximization by agro-businesses and TNC within the realization of agricultural contracts at world markets. Overseas researchers KeatingB., HerreroM., CarberryP. [4] emphasized on actual importance of compliance with strategy of foodstuff security in global environment in their studies. However, the issue of developing the strategy of precise agricultural production based on widespread use of innovation and IT technologies, research into socio-economic consequences accompanying their implementation in the 21st century remains poorly studied. Research challenge of general issue. The issue of studies the core and elements of agricultural production development process in world economy is highlighted in world economic literature pretty well. Nevertheless, the study of TNCs and agricultural businesses strategies and strategies concerning transition of TNCs to the development of precise agriculture is really meaningful. Besides, at present time the trends of direct foreign investments as for agricultural lands purchase and priorities analysis of their use by TNCs in developed and developing world countries are uncertain. Socio economic consequences of mass precise agriculture introduction for national economy in countries with agrarian specialization also require detailed researching. Problem statement, objective of research. The objective of research is to highlight the core and define the regularity of formation, as well as emphasize the basic expected socio-economic consequences of precise agriculture development strategy implementing on the grounds of generalization the world experience of agricultural TNC sactivity. To achieve the objective set the article aimed at solution the following tasks: to note the main 'players' at the world agricultural market and study the priorities of their economic activity; to study the core and the elements of 'green revolution' strategy, as well as strategy of transition to precise agricultural production based on implementing innovations and IT technologies; to define strategic goals of TNCs as for the use of acquiring land ( at the cost of direct foreign investments) on the grounds of generalization developed and developing countries experience; to point out the expected socio-economic consequences of mass implementation of precise agricultural production strategies by TNCs and national agro-businesses for the economy of the countries specialized in agriculture. Method and methodology of the study. While studying the world experience of implementation the precise agricultural production development strategies theoretical and empirical methods of scientific research were employed. Historical and logical methods, abstract and specific methods, methods of analysis and synthesis, as well as causal (cause-and-effect) method were applied in the article to define strategic priorities of agricultural business and agricultural TNC specialization, to point out expected socio-economic consequences of mass transition to precise agricultural production in the countries with agrarian specialization. Synergetic approach, method of expert estimates and casual methods were applied to ground "green revolution" strategy, as well as strategy of TNCs as for transition to precise agriculture based on innovations and IT technologies. The results of study. Agricultural production is presented by farmers, households, state agricultural sector, national agro-businesses and agro-holdings, international TNCs. As a rule, farms are focused on domestic market; they specialize in production of minor parties of manual crop production and horticulture, grow vegetables, fruit and berries, as well as they are engaged in poultry farming, beekeeping, dairy production, stockbreeding in rather small scales. The farmers in developed world countries, particularly EU countries, concentrate on organic production which is of high demand among middle-class representatives. In EU countries farming is traditionally supported by the state, as it bears both economic and social valuable functions, i.e. assists in rural development and creates workplaces in countryside. The main stakeholders at the mass agricultural market in the world are considered large national and international agro-holdings an TNCs specialized in agricultural production and its industrial processing. TNCs shaped the closed loop – from selection to agricultural production, from its processing to its manufacturing. At the cost of large production scales, as well as capital concentration and centralization it is the agricultural TNCs which leads in production and export of foodstuffs at world markets. TNCs ' leadership at world agriculture markets is grounded on 'green revolution' strategy implementing, which consists of such elements as innovations, bio-selection to produce performance breed, intensive growth in crop productivity, including the one using GMO which makes cropping insensitive to water shortage, high temperatures and droughts. Agrarian TNCs in the 21st century actively implement the strategies of transition to precise agriculture based on the use of innovations and IT technologies. As the world experience confirms, strategies of transition to precise agriculture combine the following innovations: astronaut and aviation technologies, unmanned technologies, unmanned aerial vehicles; mass transition to the use of apparatus to analyze the ground online; spreading of "agro-scouting" innovation technologies as for field information gathering concerning the condition and development of agriculture; implementation intellectual system of managerial decision-making support; introduction of monitoring and control auto-system and implementation of IT-system as for account of agriculture process elements. The development of precise agriculture for national world economies which are agriculture-based offers a lot of benefits, such as: increase in labor productivity in agriculture; the decrease in employment that saves working capital of agro-businesses; industrialization and technical renovation of agrarian sector which promotes the market for IT products, precise machine building; increase in commerce and export potential of the country, mainly, in the sphere of monostructural crop production (grain, corn, soya, raps, oilseeds etc.). Such strategies also provide revitalization of direct foreign investment processes by TNCsconcerning purchasing farmland in the developing countries with their further listing as raw materials supplier for TNCs. The latter shape and control international links of production value added to all kinds of agricultural products. Among the risks which implementation of precise agriculture strategies bear for national developing country's economy which are agriculture-based the following should be mentioned: risks concerning decrease in farms and decline in production of labor-intensive small-scale agriculture products (vegetables, fruit, honey etc.); risks of jobs recession and, respectively, the number of rural population and others. There are also other risks linked to these processes like risks of growing volumes of ready foodstuffs import, chronic scarcity of state budget and increase in internal debt, enhancing migration processes etc. In case of falling world prices for foodstuffs and worsening global conditions for agriculture products, including agrarian raw materials, in particular, due to another world economic crisis, the abandonment of occasional farmland purchased by TNCs in developing agrarian countries, their further freezing and ceasing the processing for better times should not be excluded. Under such circumstances the risks of famine for countries which could lose the managerial control over own land resources are also a threatening exercise as for implementing such TNC strategy. The field of results application. International economic relations and world economy, development of agriculture competitive strategies in world countries and agrarian TNCs in world economy. Conclusions. Farms, agro-businesses, agro-holdings and agrarian TNCs are the economic centres of mass agriculture production in all world countries. Farms are mainly specialized in labour-intensive small-scale agriculture production like horticulture, gardening, bee-keeping etc. Large agro-businesses and agrarian TNCs choose the strategy of specializing in mass monostructural agriculture production such as crop production (grain, corn, soya beans and industrial crops). In developed world countries TNCs apply the strategy of farmlands multi-purpose use, including the goals aimed at development and processing livestock and crop production; at development of renewable energy and bio-energy. In developed world countries TNCs focus on processing all kinds of agriculture products and foodstuffs production with high value added. Purchasing of farmlands by TNCs in developing countries, in particular, at the cost of direct foreign investment, provides for implementation the strategy of purchased lands engagement, mainly, to develop crop production as a raw basis for their further processing in the native countries for TNCs. The general world trend of agrarian TNCs development is use of innovation technologies, transition to precise agriculture based on IT technologies, aviation and astronautic technologies, unmanned aerial vehicles and other innovations which positively impact labor productivity and mass industrial production profitability, as well as choose transition to monostructural agrarian specialization as a priority, but bear a set of social risks for developing countries' economies. Transition of Ukrainian agro-businesses and agro-holdings to the strategy of precise agriculture development based on innovations and IT technologies provides Ukraine's competitiveness at the world agrarian markets. This process should go hand-in-hand with land reform taking into account Ukrainian farming interests. Establishing industrial processing of agriculture raw products and production of ready foodstuffs with high value added should be strategic for Ukraine.
Dottorato di ricerca in Scienze delle produzioni vegetali e animali ; Despite some deniers still persist, the evidences of climate change (CC) are currently growing before our eyes, and global warming is one of the major threats to public global health. The world is way behind on its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and in the next decades, nations must make an unprecedented effort to cut their levels of GHG to avoid climate chaos. By providing food to about 7.7 billion of people, agriculture contributes to a significant share (11-12%) of the global GHG emissions, especially because of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions sources. However, if it is true that agriculture is a part of the CC problem, it is equally true that agriculture could be a part of the solution. Carbon sequestration in the agriculture sector is the capacity of agricultural lands and forest to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Specifically, CO2 is absorbed by trees, plants and crops through photosynthesis, and stored as cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin in tree trunks, branches, foliage, roots and soils. As a result, soils are the largest terrestrial carbon sink in the planet. Therefore, if on one hand a release of just 0.1% of the soil organic carbon (SOC) currently stocked in European soils would be equal to the annual emissions from 100 million cars, on the other hand, a small increase of its content would significantly reduce the CO2 concentration in atmosphere. The dynamics (i.e., increase and decrease) of SOC are highly influenced by agricultural practices, climate and soil. In this context, by employing farming practices that involve minimal disturbance of the soil and the use of organic fertilizers, farmers may be able to increase the amount of SOC in their fields, and thus contribute to both soil fertility maintenance, and global GHG mitigation. However, although SOC sequestration could be a great ally in the fight against CC, the sustainability of the agricultural sector cannot be achieved by focusing solely on the upstream processes of the system, and GHG mitigation opportunities must be identified also at later stages of the supply chain. In this regard, by allowing the evaluation of the overall environmental impacts generated along a product/service life cycle (i.e., from raw material acquisition, through production and utilization phases, to waste management), the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a useful tool that could help in defining effective mitigation strategies. Nowadays, the need for verified and credible information on GHG emissions is increasing, with pressure coming from a wide range of interest groups (e.g., governmental and nongovernmental organizations) aimed on reducing greenwashing. In this respect, the environmental labels based on LCA studies are valuable tools to establish credible green marketing claims. This thesis is composed of three studies which have used the LCA approach to investigate the GHG emissions arising from different systems involving anthropogenic activities. In the first study, the LCA approach was used to quantify the overall GHG emissions (from cradle-to-grave) generated by a local organic beef supply chain. The study identifiesthe main GHG hotspots, and suggests some mitigation practices that could be applicable along the short supply chain. In the second study, the LCA approach allowed the evaluation of the GHG emissions (from cradle-to-farm-gate) arising from a farm that rears native beef cattle within a Mediterranean natural reserve of Italy. Specifically, in this study different agronomic practices, grazing management and climate scenarios were evaluated for their contribution on the soil GHG emissions and sinks, and thus the overall farm carbon footprint. Finally, the third and last study aimed at developing a standard (LCA-based) guideline to be followed when assessing the GHG emissions (from cradle-to-grave) generated by all the common activities taking place within a National park. Particularly, the feasibility and applicability of the guideline proposed, was tested using a Mediterranean natural reserve of Italy as case study. Although GHG hotspots and mitigation strategies were discussed within the paper, the final aim of the work was to propose a widely accepted LCA-based guideline to be followed in order to obtain an environmental declaration for natural parks. The results of this PhD thesis provide interesting insights about the GHG emissions arising from typical beef systems of the Mediterranean area, and about some possible related mitigation strategies. Although the livestock and soil emissions resulted as the main GHG hotspots of the beef supply chain, home consumption and retail phases have also shown potential room for improvement. The adoption of conservation tillage practices and the use of organic fertilizers were shown to be effective in mitigating the GHG emissions arising from the beef farm system. While, by providing a granular picture of the Mediterranean natural reserve' GHG emission sources and hotspots, the proposed LCA-based guideline shown to feasible and suitable in achieving the planned objectives. ; Nonostante l'insistenza di qualche instancabile negazionista, i cambiamenti climatici (CC) stanno avendo, e ancor di più avranno in futuro, rilevanti impatti sugli ecosistemi e sulle attività umane. Secondo l'ultimo report (2019) del Gruppo Intergovernativo sul Cambiamento Climatico (IPCC), il riscaldamento globale provocherà un aumento di siccità e piogge estreme in tutto il mondo, pregiudicando la produzione agricola e la sicurezza delle forniture alimentari. A pagarne le conseguenze saranno soprattutto le popolazioni più povere di Africa e Asia, con guerre e migrazioni. Attualmente, il mondo è indietro rispetto agli impegni presi per ridurre le emissioni di gas serra (GHG) e le nazioni devono compiere uno sforzo senza precedenti per ridurre i loro livelli di GHG nei prossimi decenni, solo così saremo in grado di evitare il caos climatico. Fornendo cibo a circa 7,7 miliardi di persone nel mondo, l'agricoltura contribuisce ad una quota significativa (11-12%) delle emissioni globali di GHG, soprattutto a causa delle importanti fonti emissive di metano (CH4) e protossido di azoto (N2O). Tuttavia, se è vero che l'agricoltura contribuisce al cambiamento climatico, è altrettanto vero che la stessa agricoltura può diventare parte della soluzione. Con il termine sequestro di carbonio, si fa riferimento alla capacità delle terre e delle foreste di rimuovere la CO2 dall'atmosfera. Attraverso il processo della fotosintesi infatti, la CO2 assorbita da alberi, piante e colture, viene immagazzinata nella biomassa di tronchi, rami, radici e suolo. Di conseguenza, i suoli rappresentano il più grande magazzino di carbonio del pianeta. Pertanto, se da una parte il rilascio dello appena 0,1% del carbonio contenuto attualmente nei suoli Europei può essere paragonabile alle emissioni annuali generate da 100 milioni di automobili, dall'altra, un altrettanto piccolo incremento di questo contenuto può avere effetti significativi sulla riduzione di CO2 nell'atmosfera. Le dinamiche (ovvero incremento e decremento) del carbonio organico contenuto nel suolo (SOC) sono fortemente influenzate dalle pratiche agricole, dal clima e dalla tipologia di terreno. In questo contesto, tramite l'impiego di pratiche agricole che comportano un disturbo minimo del suolo e l'utilizzo di fertilizzanti organici, gli agricoltori possono contribuire sia al mantenimento della fertilità del suolo, sia alla mitigazione globale dei GHG. Tuttavia, nonostante il sequestro di SOC rappresenti un grande alleato nella lotta al CC, la sostenibilità del settore agricolo non può essere raggiunta concentrandosi esclusivamente sui processi a monte del sistema, ma le opportunità di mitigazione dei GHG devono essere valutate e intraprese anche nelle fasi successive della catena di approvvigionamento. A questo scopo, consentendo la valutazione degli impatti ambientali generati lungo il ciclo di vita di un prodotto o di un servizio (ovvero, dall'acquisizione delle materie prime, passando per le fasi di produzione e utilizzo, arrivando fino alla gestione del rifiuto generato), la valutazione del ciclo di vita (LCA) è una tipologia di analisi che può essere di aiuto nel definire efficaci interventi e strategie di mitigazione. Al giorno d'oggi, la necessità di informazioni verificate e credibili sulle emissioni di GHG è in costante aumento, con pressioni provenienti da una vasta gamma di gruppi di interesse (es., organizzazioni governative e non governative) determinati a ridurre le strategie di comunicazione ingannevoli (greenwashing) che le imprese spesso utilizzano per creare una falsa immagine positiva sotto il profilo ambientale. A questo proposito, le etichette ambientali basate su studi LCA diventano strumenti preziosi per tutte le aziende che vogliono intraprendere operazioni credibili e verificate di marketing ambientale. Questa tesi di dottorato si compone di tre studi che, tramite l'utilizzo dell'approccio LCA, hanno investigato le emissioni di GHG provenienti da diversi sistemi antropogenici. Nel primo studio la metodologia LCA è stata coinvolta nella quantificazione delle emissioni GHG (dalla culla alla tomba) generate lungo una catena di approvvigionamento locale di carne bovina biologica, con lo scopo di: identificarne i principali punti emissivi (hotspots) e suggerire interventi di mitigazione applicabili lungo tutta la filiera. Nel secondo studio, l'analisi LCA è stata applicata alla quantificazione delle emissioni GHG (dalla culla al cancello della fattoria) derivanti da un'azienda agricola che alleva bovini di razza Maremmana all'interno di una riserva naturale Mediterranea del centro Italia. Nello specifico, in questo studio sono state analizzate le dinamiche con cui l'adozione di diverse pratiche agronomiche, gestione del pascolo e scenari climatici futuri, possono influenzare le emissioni di GHG e gli stoccaggi di SOC, e di conseguenza l'impronta emissiva (impronta di carbonio) totale prodotta dall'azienda. Infine, il terzo ed ultimo studio è stato incentrato allo sviluppo di una linea guida standard (basata sull'approccio LCA) da adottare al fine di valutare le emissioni di GHG (dalla culla alla tomba) generate da tutte le attività che prendono luogo generalmente all'interno di un parco/riserva nazionale. In particolare, l'applicabilità della linea guida proposta è stata testata in un caso studio che ha interessato la riserva naturale Mediterranea menzionata precedentemente. Sebbene nel documento siano stati discussi anche hotspots e possibili strategie di mitigazione, lo scopo finale del lavoro è stato quello di sviluppare una linea guida in grado di fornire un approccio LCA standardizzato da poter essere impiegato dai parchi naturali per intraprendere operazioni di marketing ambientale. I risultati di questa tesi di dottorato forniscono interessanti spunti sulle emissioni di GHG derivanti dai tipici sistemi di allevamento di carne bovina dell'area del Mediterraneo, e su alcune delle possibili correlate strategie di mitigazione. Sebbene le emissioni di GHG generate dagli animali e dal suolo siano risultate le principali fonti di emissione lungo la catena di approvvigionamento della carne, sia i consumi domestici che la vendita al dettaglio hanno mostrato potenziali margini di miglioramento. L'adozione di pratiche agronomiche meno invasive e l'uso di fertilizzanti organici hanno dimostrato di essere efficaci nel mitigare le emissioni di GHG derivanti dal comparto agricolo. Infine, avendo fornito un quadro dettagliato dei principali hotspots della riserva naturale Mediterranea, la linea guida proposta in questa tesi ha dimostrato di essere adatta all'utilizzo dei suoi risultati per operazioni di marketing ambientale da parte dei parchi nazionali.
1. Introduction Biodiesel (BD) is a liquid biofuel that is defined as a fatty acid methyl ester fulfilling standards such as the ones set by European (EN 14214) and the American (ASTM 6751) regulations. BD is obtained by the transesterification (Scheme 1.1) or alcoholysis of natural triglycerides contained in vegetable oils, animal fats, waste fats and greases, waste cooking oils (WCO) or side-stream products of refined edible oil production with short-chain alcohols, usually methanol or ethanol and using an alkaline homogeneous catalyst (Perego and Ricci, 2012). Scheme 1.1. Transesterification reaction. BD presents several advantages over petroleum-based diesel such as: biodegradability, lower particulate and common air pollutants (CO, SOx emissions, unburned hydrocarbons) emissions, absence of aromatics and a closed CO2 cycle. Refined, low acidity oilseeds (e.g. those derived from sunflower, soy, rapeseed, etc.) may be easily converted into BD, but their exploitation significantly raises the production costs, resulting in a biofuel that is uncompetitive with the petroleum-based diesel (Santori et al., 2012; Lotero et al., 2005). Moreover, the use of the aforementioned oils generated a hot debate about a possible food vs. fuel conflict, i.e. about the risk of diverting farmland or crops at the expense of food supply. It is so highly desirable to produce BD from crops specifically selected for their high productivity and low water requirements (Bianchi et al., 2011; Pirola et al., 2011), or from low-cost feedstock such as used frying oils (Boffito et al., 2012a) and animal fats (Bianchi et al., 2010). The value of these second generation biofuels, i.e. produced from crop and forest residues and from non-food energy crops, is acknowledged by the European Community, which states in its RED directive (European Union, RED Directive 2009/28/EC): ''For the purposes of demonstrating compliance with national renewable energy obligations […], the contribution made by biofuels produced from wastes, residues, non-food cellulosic material, and ligno-cellulosic material shall be considered to be twice that made by other biofuels''. However, the presence of free fatty acids in the feedstock, occurring in particular in the case of not refined oils, causes the formation of soaps as a consequence of the reaction with the alkaline catalyst. This hinders the contact between reagents and the catalyst and makes difficult the products separation. Many methods have been proposed to eliminate FFA during or prior to transesterification (Pirola et al., 2011; Santori et al., 2012). Among these the FFA pre-esterification method is a very interesting approach to lower the acidity since it allows to lower the acid value as well as to obtain methyl esters already in this preliminary step (Boffito et al., 2012a, 2012b; 2012c Bianchi et al., 2010, 2011; Pirola et al., 2010, 2011). Aims of the work The aims of this work are framed in the context of the entire biodiesel production chain, ranging from the choice of the raw material, through its standardization to the actual biodiesel production. The objectives can be therefore summarized as follows: Assessing the potential of some vegetable or waste oils for biodiesel production by their characterization, deacidification and final transformation into biodiesel; To test different ion exchange resins and sulphated inorganic systems as catalysts in the FFA esterification; To assess the use of ultrasound to assist the sol-gel synthesis of inorganic sulphated oxides to be used as catalysts in the FFA esterification reaction; To assess the use of sonochemical techniques such as ultrasound and microwave to promote both the FFA esterification and transesterification reaction. 2. Experimental details 2.1 Catalysts In this work, three kinds of acid ion exchange resins were used as catalysts for the FFA esterification: Amberlyst®15 (A15), Amberlyst®46 (A46) (Dow Chemical) and Purolite®D5081 (D5081). Their characteristic features are given in Tab. 2.1. Various sulphated inorganic catalysts, namely sulphated zirconia, sulphated zirconia+titania and sulphated tin oxide were synthesized using different techniques. Further details will be given as the results inherent to these catalysts will be presented. Catalyst A15 A46 D5081 Physical form opaque beads Type Macroreticular Matrix Styrene-DVB Cross-linking degree medium medium high Functional group -SO3H Functionalization internal external external external Form dry wet wet Surface area (m2 g-1) 53 75 514a Ave. Dp (Ǻ) 300 235 37a Total Vp (ccg-1) 0.40 0.15 0.47 Declared Acidity (meq H+g-1) 4.7 0.43 0.90-1.1 Measured acidity (meq H+g-1) 4.2 0.60 1.0 Moisture content (%wt) 1.6 26-36 55-59 Shipping weight (g l-1) 610 600 1310a Max. operating temp (K) 393 393 403 Tab. 2.1. Features of the ion exchange resins used as catalysts. The acidity of all the catalysts was determined by ion exchange followed by pH determination as described elsewhere (López et al., 2007; Boffito et al., 2012a; 2012b). Specific surface areas were determined by BET (Brunauer, Emmett and Teller, 1938) and pores sizes distribution with BJH method (Barrett, Joyner and Halenda, 1951). XRD, XPS SEM-EDX and HR-TEM analyses were performed in the case of catalysts obtained with the use of ultrasound (Boffito et al. 2012a). Qualitative analyses of Lewis and Brønsted acid sites by absorption of a basic probe followed by FTIR analyses was also carried out for this class of catalysts (Boffito et al, 2012a). 2.2 Characterization of the oils Oils were characterized for what concerns acidity (by acid-base titrations) as reported by Boffito et al. (2012a, 2012b; 2012c), iodine value (Hannus method (EN 14111:2003)), saponification value (ASTM D5558), peroxide value and composition by GC analyses of the methyl ester yielded by the esterification and transesterification. Cetane number and theoretical values of the same properties were determined using equations already reported elsewhere (Winayanuwattikun et al., 2008). 2.3 Esterification and transesterification reactions In Tab. 2.2, the conditions adopted in both the conventional and sonochemically-assisted esterification are reported. For all these experiments a temperature of 336 K was adopted. Vials were used to test the sulphated inorganic oxides, while Carberry reactor (confined catalyst) (Boffito et al., 201c) was used just for the FFA esterification of cooking oil. Rector oil (+ FFA) (g) MeOH (g) catalyst amount vial 21 3.4 5%wt/gFFA sulphated inorganic catalysts slurry 100 16 - 10 g ion exchange resins - 5%wt/gF FA sulphated inorganic catalysts Carberry 300 48 10 g (5 g in each basket) Tab. 2.2. Free fatty acids esterification reaction conditions for conventional and sonochemically-assisted experiments. All the sonochemically-assisted experiments were performed in a slurry reactor. FFA conversions were determined by acid-base titrations of oil samples withdrawn from the reactors at pre-established times and calculated as follows: "FFA conversion (%)=" (〖"FFA" 〗_"t=0" "-" 〖"FFA" 〗_"t" )/〖"FFA" 〗_"t=0" " x 100" In Tab. 2.3, the conditions of both the conventional and ultrasound (US)-assisted transesterification are reported. KOH and CH3ONa were used for conventional experiments, while just KOH for the US-assisted experiments. The BD yield was determined by GC (FID) analysis of the methyl esters. Method Reactor Step gMeOH/100 goil gKOH/100 goil Temp. (K) Time (min) traditional batch step 1 20 1.0 333 90 step 2 5.0 0.50 60 US-assisted batch step 1 20 1.0 313, 333 30 US-assisted continuos step 1 20 1.0 338 30 Tab. 2.3. Transesterification reaction conditions. 3. Results and Discussion 3.1 Characterization and deacidification of different oils by ion exchange resins: assessment of the potential for biodiesel production In Tab. 3.1 the results of the characterization of the oils utilized in this work are displayed. The value in parentheses indicate the theoretical value of the properties, calculated basing on the acidic composition. The acidity of all the oils exceeds 0.5%wt (~0.5 mgKOH/g), i.e. the acidity limit recommended by both the European normative (EN 14214) and American standard ASTM 6751 on biodiesel (BD). The iodine value (IV) is regulated by the EN 14214, which poses an upper limit of 120 gI2/100 g. The number of saturated fatty chains in the fuel determines its behaviour at low temperatures, influencing parameters such as the cloud point, the CFPP (cold filter plugging point) and the freezing point (Winayanuwattikun et al., 2008). The IV are in most of the cases similar to the ones calculated theoretically. When the experimental IV differs from the theoretical one, it is in most of the cases underestimated. This can be explained considering the peroxide numbers (PN), which indicates the concentration of O2 bound to the fatty alkyl chains and is therefore an index of the conservation state of oil. Oils with high IV usually have a high concentration of peroxides, whereas fats with low IV have a relatively low concentration of peroxides at the start of rancidity (King et al., 1933). Moreover, although PN is not specified in the current BD fuel standards, it may affect cetane number (CN), a parameter that is regulated by the standards concerning BD fuel. Increasing PN increases CN, altering the ignition delay time. Saponification number (SN) is an index of the number of the fatty alkyl chains that can be saponified. The long chain fatty acids have a low SN because they have a relatively fewer number of carboxylic functional groups per mass unit of fat compared to short chain fatty acids. In most of the cases the experimental SN are lower than the ones calculated theoretically. This can be explained always considering the PN, indicating a high concentration of oxygen bound to the fatty alkyl chains. Oil Acidity (%wt) IV1 (gI2/ 100 g) PN2 (meqO2 /kg) SN3 (mg KOH/g) CN4 Fatty acids composition (%wt) animal fat (lard)* 5.87 51 2.3 199 62.3 n.d. soybean* 5.24 138 3.8 201 42.4 n.d. tobacco1 1.68 143 (149) 21.9 199 (202) 41.6 (39.8) C14:0 (2.0) C16:0 (8.3) C18:0 (1.5) C18:1 (12.0) C18:2 (75.3) C18:3 (0.6) C20:0 (0.1) C22:0 (0.2) sunflower* 3.79 126 3.7 199 45.4 n.d. WSO5 0.50 118 (129) 71.3 187 (200) 48.9 (44.6) C16:0 (6.9) C18:0 (0.9) C18:1 (40.1) C18:2 (50.9) C18:3 (0,3) C20:0 (0.1) C20:1 (0.4) C22:0 (0.4) palm 2.71 54.0 (53.0) 12.3 201 (208) 61.3 (60.6) 16:0 (43.9) 18:0 (5.6) 18:1 (40.5) 18:2 (8.6) WCO6 2.10 53.9 (50.7) 11.0 212 (196) 59.9 (62.7) C16:0 (38.8) C18:0 (4.1) C18:1 (47.9) C18:2 (4.2) WCO:CRO =3:1 2.12 69.0 (75.5) 30.1 200 (212) 58.1 (55.1) C16:0 (30.1) C18:0 (3.1) C18:1 (51.9) C18:2 (12.0) C18:3 (2.%) C20:0 (0.2) C22:0 (0.1) WCO:CRO =1:1 2.19 76.8 (90.7) 51.3 188 (203) 58.1 (52.8) C16:0 (21.5) C18:0 (2.1) C18:1 (55.8) C18:2 (14.7) C18:3 (5.1) C20:0 (0.8) C22:0 (0.1) WCO:CRO =1:3 2.24 84.5 (104) 62.4 177 (202) 58.1 (49.9) 14:0 (0.1) 16:0 (14.7) 16:1 (0.7) 18:0 (6.85) 18:1 (40.0) 18:2 (37.0) 18:3 (0.25) 20:0 (0.25) 22:0 (0.15) rapeseed (CRO7) 2.20 118 (123) 71.6 165 (200) 52.8 (45.9) C16:0 (4.1) C18:0 (0.1) C18:1 (63.7) C18:2 (20.2) C18:3 (10.2) C20:0 (1.5) C22:0 (0.2) rapeseed* 4.17-5.12 108 (107) 3.5 203 (200) 48.9 (49.5) C16:0 (7.6) C18:0 (1.3) C18:1 (64.5) C18:2 (23.7) C18:3 (2.4) C20:0 (0.5) Brassica juncea 0.74 109 (110) 178 (185) 52.4 (51.1) C16:0 (2.4) C18:0 (1.1) C18:1 (19.9) C18:2 (19.2) C18:3 (10.9) C20:0 (7.2) C20:1 (1.7) C22:0 (0.9) C22:1 (34.8) 24:0 (1.9) safflower 1.75 139 48.9 170 47.1 n.d. WCO: tobacco2 =1:1 4.34 119 (112) 56.0 191 (203) 48.1 (48.0) C16:0 (22.5) C18:0 (3.2) C18:1 (32.0) C18:2 (42.1) C18:3 (0.2) tobacco2 6.17 141 (151) 33.4 183 (201) 44.4 (39.5) C16:0 (8.7) C18:0 (1.6) C18:1 (12.8) C18:2 (76.0) C18:3 (0.7) C20:0 (0.1) C22:0 (0.1) 1Iodine value; 2Peroxide number; 3Saponification number; 4Cetane number; 5Winterized sunflower oil, 6Waste cooking oil; 7Crude rapeseed oil; * refined, commercial oils acidified with pure oleic acid up to the indicated value. Tab. 3.1. Results of the characterization of the oils. The results of the FFA esterification performed on the different oils are given in Fig. 3.1. Fig. 3.1. Results of the FFA esterification reaction on different oils. The dotted line represents a FFA concentration equal to 0.5%wt, i.e. the limit required by both the European and American directives on BD fuel and to perform the transesterification reaction avoiding excessive soaps formation. The FFA esterification method is able to lower the acidity of most of the oils using the ion exchange resins A46 and D5081 as catalysts in the adopted reaction conditions. High conversion was obtained with A15 at the first use of the catalyst, but then its catalytic activity drastically drops after each cycle. The total loss of activity was estimated to be around 30% within the 5 cycles (results not shown for the sake of brevity). A possible explanation concerning this loss of activity may be related to the adsorption of the H2O yielded by the esterification on the internal active sites, which makes them unavailable for catalysis. When H2O molecules are formed inside the pores, they are unable to give internal retro-diffusion due to their strong interaction with H+ sites and form an aqueous phase inside the pores. The formation of this phase prevents FFA from reaching internal active sites due to repulsive effects. What appears to influence the FFA conversion is the refinement degree of the oil. WCO is in fact harder to process in comparison to refined oils (Bianchi et al., 2010; Boffito et al., 2012c), probably due to its higher viscosity which results in limitations to the mass transfer of the reagents towards the catalyst. Indeed, the required acidity limit is not achieved within 6 hours of reaction. A FFA concentration lower than 0.5%wt is not achieved also in the case of WCO mixture 3:1 with CRO and 1:1 with tobacco oil and in the case of the second stock of tobacco oil (tobacco2). This is attributable to the very low quality of these feedstocks due to the waste nature of the oil itself, in the case of WCO, or to the poor conservation conditions in the case of tobacco oilseed. In this latter case, the low FFA conversion was also ascribed to the presence of phospholipids, responsible for the deactivation of the catalyst. BD yields ranging from 90.0 to 95.0 and from 95.0 to 99.9% were obtained from deacidified raw oils using KOH and NaOCH3 as a catalyst, respectively. In Fig. 3.2, the comparison between A46 and D5081 at different temperatures and in absence of drying pretreatment (wet catalyst) is displayed. As expected, D5081 performs better than A46 in all the adopted conditions. Nevertheless, the maximum conversion within a reaction time of 6 hours is not achieved by any of the catalysts both operating at 318 K and in the absence of drying pretreatment. A more detailed study on the FFA esterification of WCO and its blends with rapeseed oil and gasoline was carried out. In Tab. 3.2 a list of all the experiments performed with WCO is reported together with the FFA conversion achieved in each case, while in Fig. 3.3 the influence of the viscosity of the blends of WCO is shown. Fig. 3.2. Comparison between the catalysts. D5081 and A46 at a) different catalysts amounts and b) temperatures and treatments. The results show that Carberry reactor is unsuitable for FFA esterification since a good contact between reagents and catalyst is not achieved due to its confinement. A15 deactivated very rapidly, while A46 and D5081 maintained their excellent performance during all the cycles of use due to the reasons already highlighted previously. The blends of WCO and CRO show an increase of the reaction rate proportional to the content of the CRO, that is attributable to the decreases viscosity (Fig. 3.3), being all the blend characterized by the same initial acidity. Also the use of diesel as a solvent resulted in a beneficial effect for the FFA esterification reaction, contributing to the higher reaction rate. Feedstock %wtFFAt=0 Reactor Cat. gcat/100 goil gcat/100 g feedstock Number of cat. re-uses FFA conv. (%), 1st use, 6 hr 1 WCO 2.10 Carberry A15 3.3 3.3 6 15.4 2 WCO 2.10 slurry A15 10 10 6 71.7 3 WCO 2.10 Carberry A46 3.3 3.3 6 7.7 4 WCO 2.10 slurry A46 10 10 6 62.0 5 WCO 2.10 slurry D5081 10 10 6 63.7 6 CRO 2.20 slurry A46 10 10 10 95.9 7 CRO 2.20 slurry D5081 10 10 10 93.7 8 WCO 2.10 slurry A46 10 10 0 62.0 9 WCO 75 CRO 25 2.12 7.5 71.3 10 WCO 50 CRO 50 2.19 5.0 79.9 11 WCO 25 CRO 75 2.24 2.5 86.1 12 CRO 2.20 10 95.9 13 WCO 75 DIESEL 25 1.74 7.5 76.8 14 WCO 50 DIESEL 50 1.17 5.0 58.7 15 WCO 25 DIESEL 75 0.65 2.5 40.4 16 WCO 25 DIESEL 75 (higher FFA input) 2.44 2.5 63.5 Tab. 3.2. Experiments performed with waste cooking oil. . Fig. 3.3. FFA conversions and viscosities of the blend of WCO with rapeseed oil. 3.2. Sulphated inorganic oxides as catalysts for the free fatty acid esterification: conventional and ultrasound assisted synthesis Conventional syntheses In Tab. 3.3, the list of all the catalyst synthesized with conventional techniques is reported together with the results of the characterization. Catalyst Composition Prep. method precursors T calc. SSA (m2g-1) Vp (cm3g-1) meq H+g-1 1 SZ1 SO42-/ZrO2 one-pot sol-gel ZTNP1, (NH4)2SO4 893 K O2 107 0.09 0.90 2a SZ2a SO42-/ZrO2 two-pots sol-gel ZTNP, H2SO4 893 K 102 0.10 0.11 2b SZ2b SO42-/ZrO2 two-pots sol-gel ZTNP, H2SO4 653 K 110 0.10 0.12 3 SZ3 SO42-/ZrO2 Physical mixing ZrOCl2.8H2O (NH4)2SO4 873 K 81 0.11 1.3 4 SZ4 Zr(SO4)2/SiO2 Impregnation Zr(SO4)2.4H2O SiO2 873 K 331 0.08 1.4 5 SZ5 Zr(SO4)2/Al2O3 Impregnation Zr(SO4)2.4H2O Al2O3 873 K 151 0.09 0.67 6 ZS Zr(SO4)2.4H2O (commercial) - - - 13 0.12 9.6 7 STTO_0 SO42-/SnO2 Physical mixing + impregnation SnO2 TiO2 P25 H2SO4 773 K 16.8 0.10 3.15 8 STTO_5 SO42-/95%SnO2-5%TiO2 773 K 15.9 0.11 3.43 9 STTO_10 SO42-/ 90%SnO2-10%TiO2 773 K 16.5 0.09 5.07 10 STTO_15 SO42-/ 85%SnO2-15%TiO2 773 K 14.9 0.11 7.13 11 STTO_20 SO42-/ 80%SnO2-20%TiO2 773 K 16.9 0.09 7.33 Tab. 3.3. Sulphated inorganic catalysts synthesized with conventional techniques. The FFA conversions of the sulphated Zr-based systems are provided in Fig. 3.4a and show that Zr-based sulphated systems do not provide a satisfactory performance in the FFA esterification, probably due to their low acid sites concentration related to their high SSA. Even if catalysts such as SZ3 and SZ4 exhibit higher acidity compared to other catalysts, it is essential that this acidity is located mainly on the catalyst surface to be effectively reached by the FFA molecules, as in the case of ZS. In Figure 3.4b, the results of the FFA esterification tests of the sulphated Sn-Ti systems are shown. Other conditions being equal, these catalysts perform better than the sulphated Zr-based systems just described. This is more likely due to the higher acidity along with a lower surface area. With increasing the TiO2 content, the acidity increases as well. This might be ascribable to the charge imbalance resulting from the heteroatoms linkage for the generation of acid centres, (Kataota and Dumesic, 1988). As a consequence, the activity increases with the TiO2 content along with the acidity of the samples. For the sake of clarity, in Fig. 3.4c the FFA esterification conversion is represented as a function of the number of active sites per unit of surface area of the samples. Ultrasound- assisted synthesis In Tab. 3.4, the list of all the catalyst synthesized with conventional techniques is reported together with the results of the characterization. Samples SZ and SZT refer to catalysts obtained with traditional sol-gel method, while samples termed USZT refer to US-obtained sulphated 80%ZrO2-20%TiO2. The name is followed by the US power, by the length of US pulses and by the molar ratio of water over precursors. For example, USZT_40_0.1_30 indicates a sample obtained with 40% of the maximum US power, on for 0.1 seconds (pulse length) and off for 0.9 seconds, using a water/ZTNP+TTIP molar ratio equal to 30. SZT was also calcined at 773 K for 6 hours, employing the same heating rate. This sample is reported as SZT_773_6h in entry 2a. Further details about the preparation can be found in a recent study (Boffito et al., 2012b). Entry Catalyst Acid capacity (meq H+/g) SSA (m2g-1) Vp (cm3g-1) Ave. BJH Dp (nm) Zr:Ti weight ratio S/(Zr+Ti) atomic ratio 1 SZ 0.30 107 0.20 6.0 100 0.090 2 SZT 0.79 152 0.19 5.0 79:21 0.085 2a SZT_773_6h 0.21 131 0.20 5.0 n.d.1 n.d 3 USZT_20_1_30 0.92 41.7 0.12 12.5 80:20 0.095 4 USZT_40_0.1_30 1.03 47.9 0.11 9.5 81:19 0.067 5 USZT_40_0.3_30 1.99 232 0.27 4.5 81:19 0.11 6 USZT_40_0.5_7.5 1.70 210 0.20 5.0 78:22 0.086 7 USZT_40_0.5_15 2.02 220 0.20 5.0 80:20 0.13 8 USZT_40_0.5_30 2.17 153 0.20 5.0 78:22 0.12 9 USZT_40_0.5_60 0.36 28.1 0.10 10 79:21 0.092 10 USZT_40_0.7_30 1.86 151 0.16 5.0 78:22 0.11 11 USZT_40_1_15 3.06 211 0.09 7.0 80:20 0.15 12 USZT_40_1_30 1.56 44.1 0.09 7.0 80:20 0.17 Tab. 3.4. Sulphated inorganic Zr-Ti systems synthesized with ultrasound-assisted sol-gel technique. Some of the results of the characterizations are displayed in Tab. 3.4. The results of the catalytic tests are shown in Fig. 3.5 a, b and c. In Fig. 3.5a and 3.5b the FFA conversions are reported for the samples synthesized using the same or different H2O/precursors ratio, respectively. Fig. 3.5. FFA conversions of sulphated inorganic Zr-Ti systems synthesized with ultrasound-assisted sol-gel for a) the same amount of H2O, b) different amount of H2O used in the sol-gel synthesis, c) in function of the meq of H+/g of catalyst Both the addition of TiO2 and the use of US during the synthesis are able to improve the properties of the catalysts and therefore the catalytic performance in the FFA esterification. The addition of TiO2 is able to increase the Brønsted acidity and, as a consequence, the catalytic activity (compare entries 1 and 2 in Tab. 3.4). The improvement in the properties of the catalysts due the use of US is probably caused by the effects generated by acoustic cavitation. Acoustic cavitation is the growth of bubble nuclei followed by the implosive collapse of bubbles in solution as a consequence of the applied sound field. This collapse generates transient hot-spots with local temperatures and pressures of several thousand K and hundreds of atmospheres, respectively (Sehgal et al., 1979). Very high speed jets (up to 100 m/s) are also formed. As documented by Suslick and Doktycz (Suslick and Doktycz, 1990), in the presence of an extended surface, such as the surface of a catalyst, the formation of the bubbles occurs at the liquid-solid interface and, as a consequence of their implosion, the high speed jets are directed towards the surface. The use of sonication in the synthesis of catalysts can therefore improve the nucleation production rate (i.e. sol-gel reaction production rate) and the production of surface defects and deformations with the formation of brittle powders (Suslick and Doktycz, 1990). For the samples obtained with the US pulses with on/off ratio from 0.3/0.7 on, the conversion does not increase much more compared to the one achieved with the sample obtained via traditional sol-gel synthesis. Their conversion is in fact comparable (see samples USZ_40_0.3_30, USZ_40_0.5_30, USZ_40_0.7_30 and SZT in Fig. 3.5a. The similarity in the catalytic performance of these catalysts may be ascribable to the fact that they are characterized by comparable values of SSA (entries 2, 5, 8, 10 in Tab. 3.4) and, in the case of the catalysts obtained with pulses, also by comparable acidities (entries 5, 8, 10 in Tab. 3.4). A high SSA may in fact be disadvantageous for the catalysis of the reaction here studied for the reasons already highlighted in the previous sections. The best catalytic performance is reached by the sample USZT_40_1_30, i.e. the one obtained using continuous US at higher power. This catalyst results in fact in a doubled catalytic activity with respect to the samples prepared either with the traditional synthesis or with the use of pulsed US. In spite the acidity of this catalyst is lower than that of the samples obtained with the US pulses, it is characterized by a rather low surface area (entry 12 in Tab. 3.4) that can be associated with a localization of the active sites mainly on its outer surface. As evidenced by the FTIR measurements (not reported for the sake of brevity), it is also important to highlight, that only in the case of the USZT_40_1_30 sample, a not negligible number of medium-strong Lewis acid sites is present at the surface, together with a high number of strong Brønsted acid centres. The XRD patterns of the samples were typical of amorphous systems, due to the low calcination temperatures. Samples calcined for a long time (SZT_773_6h) exhibit almost no catalytic activity (results not reported for the sake of brevity). This catalytic behaviour might be ascribable to the loss of part of the sulphates occurred during the calcinations step that result also in a very low acid capacity (see Tab. 3.4). For the sake of clarity, in Fig. 3.5c the FFA conversions as a function of the concentration of the acid sites normalized to the surface area are reported for the most significant samples. For what concerns how the water/precursors ratio affects the catalysts acidity, some general observations can be made: increasing it up to a certain amount increases the H+ concentration (compare entries from 6 to 9 and 11 to 12 in Tab. 3.4) because the rate of the hydrolysis and the number of H2O molecules that can be chemically bounded increases. Nevertheless, increasing the water/precursor ratio over a certain amount (30 for pulsed and 15 for continuous US, entries 8 and 11 in Tab. 3.4, respectively), seems to have a negative effect on the acidity concentration. In fact, the risk of the extraction of acid groups by the excess of water increases as well and the US power density decreases. 3.3 Sonochemically-assisted esterification and transesterification Esterification In Tab. 3.5 a list of the sonochemically-assisted esterification experiments is displayed together with the final acidities achieved after 4 hours of reaction. The reactor used for these experiments, provided with both an US horn (20 kHz) and a MW emitter (2450 MHz) is described elsewhere in detail (Ragaini et al., 2012). Standard calorimetric measurements were carried out to measure the actual emitted power (Suslick and Lorimer, 1989). Considering entries from 1 to 6 (rapeseed oil with high acidity), a final acidity lower than 0.5%wt is achieved within 4 hours operating at the conventional temperature of 336 K with all the methods, while this does not happen operating at lower temperatures. In particular, the lowest acidity is achieved at 336 K with MW. Considering entries from 7 to 12, inherent to the raw tobacco oilseed, final acidities lower than 0.5%wt are achieved only with the use of US. It is remarkable that at the temperature of 293 K the FFA esterification reaction rate results 6X faster than the conventional process at the same temperature. In the case of the rapeseed oil with low acidity (entries from 13 to 20), the use of MW increases the FFA conversion at 293 K and 313 K but not at 336 K. Moreover, the higher the applied power, the higher the FFA conversion. Oil Initial acidity (%wt) Cat. Technique Temp. (K) Emitted power (W) Tthermostat (K) Final acidity (%wt), 4 hr 1 Rapeseed oil (5)* 4.2-5.0 A46 conventional 313 - 315 1.18 2 336 338 0.50 3 ultrasound 313 38.5 293 0.55 4 336 313 0.48 5 microwaves 313 61.4 293 0.69 6 336 313 0.32 7 Tobacco 1.17 A46 conventional 293 - 293 0.97 8 313 315 0.55 9 336 338 0.45 10 ultrasound 293 38.5 277 0.48 11 313 293 0.46 12 336 313 0.30 13 Rapeseed oil (2)* 2.0-2.3 D5081 conventional 293 - 277 0.82 14 313 315 0.44 15 336 338 0.25 16 microwaves 293 31.7 277 0.73 17 313 31.7 293 0.34 18 61.4 293 0.37 19 336 31.7 313 0.29 20 61.4 313 0.25 Tab. 3.5. Sonochemically-assisted esterification experiments. The positive effects of acoustic-cavitation in liquid-solid systems are ascribable to the asymmetric collapse of the bubbles in the vicinity of the solid surface. When a cavitation bubble collapses violently near a solid surface, liquid jets are produced and high-speed jets of liquid are driven into the surface of a particle. These jets and shock waves improve both the liquid–solid and liquid-liquid mass transfer (Mason and Lorimer, 1988). MW is considered as a non-conventional heating system: when MW pass through a material with a dipole moment, the molecules composing the material try to align with the electric field (Mingos et al., 1997). Polar molecules have stronger interactions with the electric field. Polar ends of the molecules tend in fact to align themselves and oscillate in step with the oscillating electric field. Collisions and friction between the moving molecules results in heating (Toukoniitty et al., 2005). The increase of the FFA conversion as the power increases may be attributed to the fact that more power is delivered to the system and, therefore, the enhanced temperature effects caused by electromagnetic irradiation are increased with respect to lower powers. Differently the reason why a too high power was detrimental at the temperature of 336 K could be accounted for by two factors: i) the acoustic cavitation is enhanced at lower temperatures due to the higher amount of gas dissolved; ii) possible generation of too high temperatures inside the reaction medium that could have caused the removal of methanol from the system through constant evaporation or pyrolysis. Transesterification Transesterification experiments were performed on rapeseed oil both in batch and continuous mode. For the batch experiments two kinds of reactors were used: a traditional reaction vessel and a Rosett cell reactor, both with two ultrasound horns with different tip diameters (13 and 20 mm), and operating powers. A Rosett cell is a reactor designed to promote hydrodynamic cavitation through its typical loops placed at the bottom of vessel. Sonicators used in this work were provided by Synetude Company (Chambery, France). In Fig. 3.6, results from the conventional and the US-assisted batch experiments are compared. The US methods allows to attain very high yields in much shorter times than the traditional method and using less reagents (see Tab. 2.3) in just one step. The beneficial effects given by the US are attributable to the generation of acoustic cavitation inside the reaction medium leading to the phenomena already described in the case of esterification reaction. In particular, with the use of the Rosett cell reactor, BD yields of 96.5% (dotted lined) are achieved after 10 minutes of reaction. This is likely due to the combined approach exploiting acoustic cavitation along with hydrodynamic cavitation, which is able to provide a very efficient mixing inside the system. The use of the Rosett cell reactor provided transesterification reaction rates up to 15X faster than the conventional process. Continuous experiments were performed using two tubular reactors with different volumes (0.070 L at 35 KHz and 0.700 L at 20 kHz) and different US powers (19.3 and 68.3 W, respectively). The volume of the treated reagents was varied to obtain the same power density in both the reactors. Results are presented in Fig. 3.7. BD yields higher than 96.5% were obtained in the case of the small reactor within a reaction time of ~5 minutes. It is remarkable that BD yields higher than 90% were obtained using pulsed US (2 seconds on, 2 seconds off) after only 18 seconds, corresponding to just one passage in the reactor. In this case the transesterification reaction rate was 300X faster than the conventional process. The beneficial effects of pulses for the reactivity of the transesterification have been extensively reported (Chand et al., 2010; Kumar et al., 2010). In particular, as reported by Chand, when pulses are adopted, excessive heating of the reaction medium is not promoted, so preventing the loss of the gases dissolved in the system that are necessary for the acoustic cavitation to occur. Moreover, excessive heating during the transesterification reaction might lead to evaporation followed by pyrolysis of methanol and its subsequent removal from the reaction environment. 4. Conclusions As a conclusion to this work, some final remarks can be claimed: Feedstocks with a high potential for biodiesel (BD) production are Brassica juncea oilseed, which can be used as feedstock for BD100, Carthamus tinctorus, tobacco, animal fat and waste cooking oil to be used in BD blends with other oils or in diesel blends. However, blending different oils among them or with diesel already during the free fatty acids (FFA) esterification reaction may increase the reaction rate due to the lowered viscosity. Free fatty acids esterification over acid ion exchange resins in slurry reactors remains the preferred method of oils deacidification due to the optimal contact between the reagents and the catalyst and the good durability over time. The final high BD yields obtained for the oils de-acidified with the pre-esterification method over sulphonic ion exchange resins demonstrate its effectiveness in lowering the acidity and the possibility of obtaining high quality biodiesel from the selected feedstocks. Surface acidity and specific surface area of sulphated inorganic systems can be increased by both adding TiO2 and using ultrasound (US) in precise experimental conditions to assist the sol-gel synthesis of the catalysts. Changing the experimental conditions of US during the sol-gel synthesis makes also possible to tune the properties of the catalysts. In spite of not satisfying FFA conversions were obtained, US-assisted sol-gel synthesis turns out to be an extremely interesting method to obtain catalysts with high acidity and surface area. Both US and microwaves (MW) enhanced the FFA esterification reaction rate at temperatures lower than the one used conventionally (336 K). The positive effects of US are attributable to the phenomena generated inside the reaction medium by the acoustic cavitation, while MW are able to generate temperature effects localized in the proximity of the catalyst surface and to increase MeOH-oil solubility. US-assisted transesterification reaction is much faster than conventional transesterification: BD yields higher than 96.5% were achieved in most of the cases within 10 minutes of reaction, whereas the conventional method requires 150 minutes, besides higher reagents amount and higher temperatures. In particular, BD yields higher than 90% were obtained using a continuous reactor and pulsed US within 18 seconds, corresponding to just one passage in the reactor. In this case the transesterification reaction rate resulted to be 300X faster than the conventional process. Suggestions for the continuations of the work concern the further study of the synthesis of sulphated inorganic systems such as SO42-/ZrO2 or SnO2 or TiO2 with US and MW. Future work should also be devoted to the optimization of the experimental variables related to the use of MW and US to promote both FFA esterification and transesterification reactions. References Barrett E.P., Joyner L.G., Halenda P.P., "The determination of pore volume and area distributions in porous substances. I. Computations from nitrogen isotherms", J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1951, 73, 373. Bianchi C.L., Boffito D.C., Pirola C., Ragaini V., "Low temperature de-acidification process of animal fat as a pre-step to biodiesel production", Catal. Lett., 2010, 134, 179. Bianchi C.L., Pirola C., Boffito D.C., Di Fronzo A., Carvoli G., Barnabè D., A. Rispoli, R. Bucchi, "Non edible oils: raw materials for sustainable biodiesel", in Stoytcheva M., Montero G. (Eds.): Biodiesel Feedstocks and Processing Technologies, Intech, 2011, pp. 3-22. Boffito D.C., Pirola C., Galli F., Di Michele A., Bianchi C.L., "Free Fatty Acids Esterification of Waste Cooking Oil and its mixtures with Rapeseed Oil and Diesel", Fuel, 2012a, accepted on 19th October 2012, DOI:10.1016/j.fuel.2012.10.069. Boffito D.C., Crocellà V., Pirola C., Neppolian B., Cerrato G., Ashokkumar M., Bianchi C.L., "Ultrasonic enhancement of the acidity, surface area and free fatty acids esterification catalytic activity of sulphated ZrO2-TiO2 systems", J. Catal., 2012b, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcat.2012.09.013 Boffito D.C., Pirola C., Bianchi C.L., "Heterogeneous catalysis for free fatty acids esterification rea.ction as a first step towards biodiesel production", Chem, Today, 2012c, 30, 14. Brunauer S., Hemmett P., Teller E., "Adsorption of Gases in Multimolecular Layers", J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1938, 60, 309. López D. E., Suwannakarn K., Bruce D. A., Goodwin JG. "Esterification and transesterification on tungstated zirconia: Effect of calcination temperature", J Catal 2007, 247, 43. Mason T.J., Lorimer J.P., "Sonochemistry, Theory, Applications and Uses of Ultrasound in Chemistry", Efford, J. Wiley, New York, 1988. Mingos D.M.P.,Baghurst D.R., "Applications of Microwave Dielectric Heating Effects to Synthetic Problems in Chemistry", Microwave-Enhanced Chemistry, American Chemical Society,Washington, DC, USA, 1997. Perego C., Ricci, M., "Diesel fuel from biomass", Catal. Sci. Technol., 2012, 1, 1776. Pirola C., Boffito D.C., Carvoli G., Di Fronzo A., Ragaini V., Bianchi C.L., "Soybean oil deacidification as a first step towards biodiesel production", in D. Krezhova (Ed.): Recent Trends for Enhancing the Diversity and Quality of Soybean Products, Intech, 2011, pp. 321-44. Pirola C., Bianchi C.L., Boffito D.C., Carvoli G., Ragaini V., "Vegetable oil deacidification by Amberlyst : study of catalyst lifetime and a suitable reactor configuration", Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 2010, 49, 4601. Ragaini V., Pirola C., Borrelli S., Ferrari C., Longo I., "Simultaneous ultrasound and microwave new reactor: Detailed description and energetic considerations", Ultrasonics Sonochemistry 2012, 19, 872 Sehgal C., Steer R.P., Sutherland R.G., Verrall R.E., "Sonoluminescence of argon saturated alkali metal salt solutions as a probe of acoustic cavitation", J. Chem. Phys., 1979, 70, 2242. Suslick K. S., Doktycz, S. J., "The Effects of Ultrasound on Solids" in Mason, T.J.: Advances in Sonochemistry, JAI Press: New York, 1990, vol.1, pp. 197-230. Toukoniitty B., Mikkola J.P., Murzin D.Yu., Salmi T., "Utilization of electromagnetic and acoustic irradiation in enhancing heterogeneous catalytic reactions", Appl. Catal. A 2005, 279, 1 Winayanuwattikun P., Kaewpiboon C., Piriyakananon K., Tantong S., Thakernkarnkit W., Chulalaksananukul W. et al. "Potential plant oil feedstock for lipase-catalyzed biodiesel production in Thailand", Biomass. and Bioen. 2008, 32, 1279.
Esta tesis estudia la evolución de los sistemas lagunares en Tierra de Campos a lo largo de cien años a través de la caracterización de una serie de variables ambientales adoptándolas a un sistema de análisis acorde con el método científico, desarrollando una metodología aplicada. Para llevar a cabo dicho estudio primero se ha realizado un reconocimiento de la zona a través del trabajo de campo, ejecutado desde noviembre de 2007 hasta octubre de 2011, con el fin de monitorizar los parámetros fisicoquímicos más importantes del agua e identificar la variación anual de la superficie lagunar. A continuación se han generado capas cartográficas que han permitido observar la evolución de los sistemas lagunares en el siglo XX. Para ello primero se han identificado las lagunas reveladas por el levantamiento del Mapa Topográfico Nacional de 1900 a 1933 realizado por el Ejército Español. Posteriormente se han digitalizado y georreferenciado 387 fotografías aéreas analógicas del Vuelo Americano de 1956-1959 y del vuelo del Instituto Geográfico Nacional de 1983-1984 donde se han identificado las lagunas y zonas húmedas existentes en la zona de estudio. Para completar el estudio del siglo se han reconocido las lagunas existentes en 2007 y 2008 con las ortofotografías del Plan Nacional de Ortofotografía Aérea. En tercer lugar se ha realizado una descripción medioambiental de la zona: A nivel geológico el territorio se compone en su totalidad por rocas sedimentarias del terciario y del cuaternario, principalmente terrígenos y algunos carbonatos. Se sitúa en una cuenca endorreica ubicada entre las cuencas del río Esla y la del río Carrión, destacando la unidad estratigráfica de "Tierra de Campos". La geomorfología se caracteriza por presentar formas suaves que otorgan una homogeneidad del relieve, carente de desniveles abruptos, dando lugar a un paisaje abierto de llanura alomada. La edafología de la zona muestra una fuerte antropización, por su predisposición al cultivo de cereales. Así dentro de la clasificación de los suelos de la FAO en esta área hay que destacar la unidad litológica de "Tierra de Campos" compuesta por asociaciones de suelos de Cambisol calcáreo y Regosol calcáreo. Destacar los suelos pertenecientes a la unidad de las lagunas históricas (Villafáfila) conformados por asociaciones de Cambisol gleíco y Gleysol eútrico. La red hídrica se caracteriza por la presencia de ríos de poca envergadura con una gran variabilidad del caudal y por una densa red de arroyos. Esta red muestra una morfología completamente artificial a consecuencia de las actuaciones realizadas sobre ella. Los sistemas lagunares se abastecen de los aportes de la lluvia y de los afloramientos del nivel freático. Su nivel del agua varía a lo largo del año llegando a secarse algunos meses. Entre las lagunas existen canales de conexión que las otorgan de un comportamiento de llenado en cascada por rebose de la fuente o manantial. El clima de la zona se caracteriza por la crudeza y duración de los inviernos y un verano corto y caluroso; con un episodio de aridez importante abarcando desde junio a septiembre. La pluviometría anual es de 408 a 475 mm/año, las temperaturas medias de mínima y máxima oscilan de 6⁰C a 19⁰C, la evapotranspiración potencial corregida es de 676,26 mm/año y la evapotranspiración real de 374,23 mm, la lluvia útil alcanza valores de 49,02 mm y los vientos dominantes son de componente oeste suroeste. A nivel de vegetación la zona de estudio se ubica dentro de la región Mediterránea en la provincia biogeográfica Castellano-Maestrazgo-Manchega en el sector Castellano duriense y a nivel bioclimático en el piso Supramediterráneo inferior. La vegetación arbórea se ha visto muy afectada por la adaptación del entorno a la agricultura. La flora presente está asociada a dos tipos diferentes de ecosistemas lagunares: las aguas asociadas a hábitats de saladares y yesos (permiten el desarrollo de especies vegetales adaptadas a condiciones halófitas) y los ecosistemas de agua dulce (favorecen el desarrollo de vegetación béntica, algas y comunidades vegetales de plantas flotantes). En los entornos de estas formaciones existen prados húmedos mediterráneos de hierbas altas. La importancia faunística de este lugar radica en una elevada diversidad, principalmente de aves, las cuales utilizan estas áreas como zonas de nidificación o invernada y por la existencia de especies sedentarias emblemáticas de estos parajes, en estado de protección, como la Avutarda (Otis Tarda) entre otras. El medio social ha sido uno de los factores que más ha influenciado en la modificación de este entorno por la actividad productora y la aplicación de las políticas desarrollistas territoriales. A pesar de ello actualmente, la presencia humana permite el mantenimiento de unas condiciones favorables para la conservación de cultivos de leguminosas y cereales que son el sustento alimenticio de gran parte de la fauna. Para ayudar a la conservación y en la futura gestión de estos hábitats, este estudio describe los cambios que se han producido en estos entornos, utilizando datos de los años 1900-1933, 1956, 1984 y 2007-2008. Varios modelos de regresión logística permitieron la proyección precisa de la ubicación de los humedales que necesitan ser restaurados o regenerados. Estos modelos fueron desarrollados usando una combinación de 21 variables explicativas, incluyendo: datos relacionados con sistemas lagunares históricos, variaciones en las superficies de humedales, físico-química del suelo y los datos meteorológicos y datos de planificación socioeconómicos y espaciales, como se representa mediante cartografía temática. Las imágenes obtenidas que se utilizaron para proyectar los humedales en el área de estudio se clasificaron en diez categorías en función de la probabilidad de la presencia de lagunas. Estos mapas generados muestran que la extensión espacial de los humedales de la comarca de Tierra de Campos fue 1,44% en 1900 hasta 1933 y se redujo a 0,57% en el período 2007-2008. La disminución dramática en la extensión espacial cubierta por estos ecosistemas se observa durante el siglo XX de acuerdo con estos mapas; en consecuencia, estos resultados ponen de manifiesto los efectos de las políticas negativas (de desecación) o positivas (de protección) implementadas en la zona. Finalmente se exponen la discusión de los datos, las conclusiones y los futuros desarrollos. ; This thesis studies the evolution of the wetland systems in Tierra de Campos over one hundred years, through the characterisation of a series of environmental variables adapted to an analysis system in accordance with the scientific method, and with the development of an applied methodology. To carry out this study, first a survey of the area was made by means of fieldwork from November 2007 to October 2011 in order to monitor the most important physicochemical parameters of the water and identify the annual variation of the lakelet surface area. Then, map layers were generated which allow the evolution of the wetland systems in the twentieth century to be seen. For this, first the lakelets were identified that were revealed by the making of the National Topographic Map from 1900 to 1933 by the Spanish Army. Subsequently, 387 analogue aerial photographs were digitalised and georeferenced. These were taken by the American military from 1956 to 1959, and by the National Geographic Institute from 1983- 1984, and the lakelets and wetland areas existing in the area of study have been identified. To complete the study of the century, the lakelets existing in 2007 and 2008 have been examined using the orthophotos from the National Plan for Aerial Orthography. Thirdly, an environmental description of the area is given: Geologically, the territory is entirely made up of sedimentary rocks from the Tertiary and Quaternary, mainly terrigenous and some carbonates. It is located in an endorheic basin between the basins of the river Esla and river Carrión, which defines the stratigraphic unit of "Tierra de Campos". The geomorphology is characterised by smooth forms that confer a homogeneity of relief with no abrupt changes in level, which gives rise to an open landscape of undulating plains. The edaphology of the area shows strong anthropization, due to its predisposition to cereal cultivation. Thus, within the FAO soil classification in this area, the lithological unit of "Tierra de Campos" should be highlighted which is made up of soil associations of calcareous Cambisol and calcareous Regosol. The soils belonging to the unit of historic wetlands (Villafáfila) stand out, these are formed by associations of gleyic Cambisol and eutric Cambisol. The water network is characterised by the presence of small rivers with a large variability in flow and a dense network of streams. This network displays a completely artificial morphology as a consequence of the work carried on it. The wetland systems are supplied with rainfall and upwelling groundwater. Their water level varies over the year, and they dry out for some months. There are connection channels between the lakelets which provide them with cascade filling behaviour due to the overflow of the source or spring. The climate of the area is characterised by the harshness and duration of the winters and a short and hot summer, with a significant arid episode from June to September. The annual rainfall is from 408 to 475 mm/year, the minimum and maximum temperatures oscillate between 6° C and 19° C, the potential evapotranspiration is 676.26 mm/year and the real evapotranspiration is 374.23 mm, the useful rain reaches values of 49.02 mm and the dominate winds are west southwest. As regards vegetation, the study area is located in the Mediterranean region in the biogeographical province of Castellano-Maestrazgo-Manchega in the Castellano duriense sector, and at bioclimatic level, in the lower Supra-Mediterranean belt. The arboreal vegetation has been seriously affected by the adaptation of the environment to agriculture. The flora present is associated with two different types of wetland ecosystems: the waters associated with salt marsh and gypsum habitats (these allow the development of plant species adapted to halophyte conditions) and the fresh water ecosystems (favouring the development of benthic vegetation, algae and floating plant communities). Surrounding these formations are Mediterranean wet meadows of tall grass. The importance of the fauna in this location lies in its great diversity, mainly birds, which use these areas for nesting or wintering, and in the existence of sedentary species emblematic of these protected landscapes, such as the bustard (Otis Tarda), among others. The social context has been one of the most influential factors in the changes in this environment due to productive activity and the application of territorial development policies. Currently, in spite of this, the human presence allows favourable conditions to be maintained for the conservation of leguminous and cereal crops that are the food source for a large part of the fauna. To support the conservation and future management of these habitats, this study describes the changes that have occurred in these environments, using data from 1900-1933, 1956, 1984 and 2007 - 2008. Several logistic regression models allow the accurate forecast of the location of the wetlands that need to be restored and regenerated. These models were developed using a combination of 21 explanatory variables, including: data relating to historic lakelet systems, variations in the surface areas of the wetlands, soil physicochemical data, meteorological data, socioeconomic planning and spatial data, as represented by thematic mapping. The images obtained that were used to forecast the wetlands in the study area were classified in ten categories depending on the probability of the presence of lakelets. These generated maps show that the spatial extent of the wetlands in the Tierra de Campos region was 1.44% in 1900 up to 1933 and this reduced to 0.57% in the period 2007-2008. The dramatic reduction in the spatial extent covered by these ecosystems is observed during the 20th century according to these maps; consequently, these results highlight the effects of negative (drying out) and positive (protection) policies implemented in the area. Finally, there is a discussion on the data, the conclusions and on future developments.
Low export prices and high production costs are contributing to a persistent deficit in the external accounts. Despite narrowing somewhat in recent years, Zimbabwe's current account deficit remains much larger than those of comparable countries in the region, and exports currently amount to just over half of imports. A decline in global prices for gold, platinum and other mineral commodities, coupled with unresolved supply-side constraints, has reduced the value of mining exports. Zimbabwe has also benefited from lower oil prices, but rising import volumes largely offset the impact on import values. Remittances gradually increased during 2010-2015 and are estimated to have reached almost 7 percent of Gross National Income (GNI) in 2015. The domestic financial sector is slowly recovering from a post-dollarization credit boom and interest rates remain elevated. The Central Bank has stabilized the financial sector, a recent growth of broad money looks robust and bank lending has become market-driven. But still only blue-chip borrowers are able to access financing at competitive rates. The authorities are taking measures to update Zimbabwe's credit infrastructure, strengthen oversight and restore the regulatory framework. Zimbabwe is experiencing a deflationary trend in response to these macroeconomic imbalances. The multicurrency regime, adopted in 2009, limits monetary policy instruments available to the authorities but also provides a level of fiscal and economic restraint. As competitive pressures increased, the consumer price index fell -2.5 percent, year-on-years, at end-2015. Declining prices should help to restore competitiveness over time, but should be accompanied by efforts to raise productivity at all levels of the economy.
In 1990, Australia and New Zealand were ranked around 25th and 37th in terms of Gross National Product (GNP) per capita, having been the highest-income countries in the world one hundred years earlier. Those countries relatively poor economic growth performance over that long period contrasts markedly with that of the past 15 years, when these two economies out-performed most other high-income countries. This difference in growth performance is due to major economic policy reforms during the past two to three decades, both at and behind the border. The report provide new evidence on the extent of governmental distortions to agricultural incentives in particular in the Australian and New Zealand economies since the late 1940s, both directly due to agricultural policies per se and indirectly (and negatively) through protection to manufacturing.
Jackie's Experiential Learning in Jack Gantos' Dead End In Norvelt Rheza Arief Dwi Piscesa English Literature Faculty of Languages and Arts State University of Surabaya rheza.arief@gmail.com Hujuala Rika Ayu, SS., MA. English Department Faculty of Languages and Arts State University of Surabaya ayuhujualarika@yahoo.com Abstrak Pembelajaran adalah suatu proses mengakuisisi sebuah pengetahuan. Karakter utama di novel ini, Jackie Gantos, mendapatkan berbagai macam ilmu melalui pengalaman, belajar, atau dengan diajarkan oleh orang lain. Di Dead End in Norvelt, proses pembelajaran yang banyak terjadi didapatkan melalui pengalaman. Jackie Gantos mendapatkan pengetahuan melalui pengalaman, hal ini dapat dianalisa menggunakan Kolb's experiential learning. Kolb's experiential learning adalah sebuah metode pembelajaran dengan cara mewariskan pengetahuan secara langsung melalui pengalaman ke dalam diri seseorang tersebut. Tujuan dari thesis ini adalah untuk memperlihatkan proses dari experiential learning di dalam hidup Jackie dan menemukan faktor-faktor yang mempengaruhi Jackie dalam usahanya untuk mengaplikasikan experiential learning dalam kehidupannya di kota Norvelt. Dengan memunculkan proses experiential learning, dapat diketahui bagaimana sebuah pengalaman diwariskan kepada orang lain serta faktor apa yang memunculkan experiential learning. Setelah experiential learning terjadi, Jackie mendapatkan banyak sekali pengetahuan, contohnya cara menggunakan senjata dengan aman, sejarah dari kota Norvelt, idealism dari seorang Eleanor Roosevelt dan lain lain. Proses mendapatkan pengetahuan ini tampak dalam tabel pembelajaran Kolb's dan faktor-faktor yang mempengaruhi terjadinya proses experiential learning dari Kolb's adalah social interaction dan self-realization. Kata Kunci: experiential learning, social interaction, self-realization. Abstract Learning is the acquisition of knowledge. The main character, Jackie Gantos, obtained skills through experience, study, or by being taught. In Dead End in Norvelt, most of the process of learning obtained through experience. Jackie Gantos' gaining knowledge through experience is analyzed by using Kolb's experiential learning. Kolb's experiential learning is a method of learning by inheriting the knowledge directly through experience that happened in a person. The objective of this thesis are to reveal the process of experiential learning in Jackie's life and finding factors that triggers Jackie's effort of applying experiential learning in his life in Norvelt. By revealing the experiential learning process, it can be found out how an experience is passed on to others and the factors that triggers experiential learning. After the experiential learning happened, Jackie gain knowledge on many things such as gun safety, history of Norvelt, Eleanor Roosevelt idealism and etc. This process of gaining knowledge is depicted through Kolb's learning table and the factors that trigger Kolb's experiential learning are social interaction and self-realization. Keywords: experiential learning, social interaction, self-realization. INTRODUCTION Learning is a process of acquiring knowledge through study. This process of learning usually occurs between students and lecturers in a formal educational school. Educational School gives courses and inheriting skillssuch as Physics, History, Chemist, Math and Language from teacher to children. There is also another way to learn something to gain knowledge and increase our understanding about the world. This way of learning is different from the original way of learning such as studying in a school and comprehend the knowledge that our teacher gives. For example, a farmer boy learn how to plough and plant seeds by seeing his father working at the field. After the boy grew up and strong enough, his father ask the boy to help him work at the field. His father showed him how to plough land, watering the field and keeping away birds from destroying the field. This boy gain knowledge through a different method than the original method of studying which is reading books and attending school. The way of the boy learning through experience, from the events of learning through his dad and working to help his dad, is the experiential learning. Experiential learning is a process of gaining knowledge through experience. This knowledge is a result from the combination of grasping and transforming the experience itself. This theory is a well-known model in education. David Kolb in his book, Experiential Learning Theory, presents a cycle of four elements to define the theory. Experiencing problem, observing the critical problem, making a concept of abstract to solve the problem, and actively experimenting to solve the problem. This process leads to a further critical reflection about the experiment and the result of the experiment. This learning theory is a development of various studies regarding to the cognitive development by Jean Piaget and philosophical perspective of pragmatism by John Dewey. Dewey's philosophical perspective of pragmatism is conveyed in his statement based on Kolb's: " If one attempts to formulate the philosophy of education implicit in the practices of the new education, we may, I think, discover certain common principles … To imposition from above is opposed expression and cultivation of individuality; to external discipline is opposed free activity ;to learning from texts and teachers, learning through experience; to acquisition of isolated skills and techniques by drill is opposed acquisition of them as means of attaining ends which make direct vital appeal; to preparation for a more or less remote future is opposed making the most of the opportunities of present life; to static aims and materials is opposed acquaintance with a changing world … I take it that the fundamental unity of the newer philosophy is found in the idea that there is an intimate and necessary relation between the processes of actual experience and education." (1938, pp.19, 20) Based on the statement by Dewey, Piaget developed this philosophy and researched Dewey's perspective into a new method to differenciate the actual learning experience as a set of educational method which invoke a knowledge that build through a relation of experience and education. Piaget's theory describes how intelligence is built through experience. He defines that intelegence is not an innate internal characteristic of the individual but comes alive as a product of the interaction between the person and his or her environment and action is the key point for Piaget. A person who does experiment gathers experience and gains knowledge through the process. In this case, experiential learning studies the process of transforming the experience into a certain knowledge. Just like the saying of Julius Caesar, "Experience is the teacher of all things." (40s BC, Commentaries on the Civil War, 2. 8), this process of experiential learning can be found mainly in the character of Jack Gantos in Jack Gantos' "Dead End in Norvelt".Jackie Gantos, the main character, living his life of summer days in Norvelt and experiencesmany things through his adventure. Summer days are his moments of hunting season with his dad, helping Miss Volker writing obituaries for the local paper, examining dead body in a Morgue which Bunny's dad work, investigating the whereabout of Mrs. Dubicki. This actions is the sets of events that can be analyzed as a process of experiential learning of Jackie in the novel. Jackie is always curious about many things, that is why he always gets into trouble. He is a good boy, but his action sometimes make his mom got a headache. This because Jackie always gets a nosebleed everytime he gets too excited, which is his mother always worried about. His adventure in Norvelt somewhat he must complices with his nosebleed problem. In his adventure, Jackie experiences many things, he knows how to safely lock the gun to prevent it blasts accidentally by learning it from his hunting experience with his dad. He also learn how to write using a typewriter while helping Mrs. Volker to write her obituaries for the local paper. This process of learning gains him knowledge through experience that happened through his adventure. It is a concrete fact that people do learn from their experience and for nontraditional students such as minorities, the poor, and mature adults – experiential learning has become the method of choice for learning and personal development. (Kolb, 1984: 3) John Byran Gantos, Jr., better known asJack Gantos(born July 2, 1951) is anAmericanauthor ofchildren's booksrenowned for his fictional characterJoey Pigza, a boy withattention-deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD). Gantos has won several literary awards, including theNewbery Honor, thePrintz Honor, and theSibert Honorfrom theAmerican Library Association, and he has been a finalist for theNational Book Award. His latest book,Dead End in Norvelt(2011) won the 2012Newbery Medal. Jack Gantos received both hisBFAand hisMAfromEmerson College. While in college, Gantos began working on picture books with an illustrator friend. In 1976, they published their first book,Rotten Ralph. Gantos continued writing children's books and began teaching courses in children's book writing. He was a professor of creative writing and literature (1978–95) and a visiting professor at Brown University (1986), University of New Mexico (1993) and Vermont College (1996). He developed master's degree programs in children's book writing at Emerson College and Vermont College. Jack Gantos writing career began when he work together on picture books in college with his illustrator friend. In 1976, they published their first book, Rotten Ralph. Gantos cares so much about children by publishing dozens of book regarding to picture books for kids. In his last novel Dead End in Norvelt, he creates a master copy of his childhood life into a dazzling novel that easy to understand with a portion of historical value to give an early history lesson to children. The main point of this study is the experiential learning that Jackie Gantos experience in his hometown of Norvelt. His dad is a former WWII soldier, he kept possession of many memorabilia such as Japanesse rifle and other stuff of war. This interacts Jackie to play with his stuff such as Japanesse rifle and pretend to acts like Jackie is in a war that is played on the screenplay over the neighbor. The story of the novel continue about Jackie's adventure in his town and learning experience on events such as helping writing historical obituary for Miss Volker, and secretly build an airplane in his garage with his dad. Gantos' novel Dead End in Norvelt focused more on the life of Jackie Gantos that happened in Norvelt at summer of 1962and the social interaction that happened between him and the people in Norvelt. It leads to a great adventure of him, this makes Jackie learns about many topic that he experiences in his life. Jackie lives for a time in Norvelt, a real Pennsylvania town created during the Great Depression and based on the socialist idea of community farming. Jackie's summer of 1962 begins badly: plagued by frequent and explosive nosebleeds, Jackie is assigned to take dictation for the arthritic obituary writer, Miss Volker, and kept alarmingly busy by elderly residents dying in rapid succession. Then the Hells Angels roll in. Gore is a Gantos hallmark but the squeamish are forewarned that Jackie spends much of the book with blood pouring down his face and has a run-in with home cauterization. Gradually, Jackie learns to face death and his fears straight on while absorbing Miss Volker's theories about the importance of knowing history. Based on the explanation above, this study would like to discuss on Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory by focusing on Jackie Gantos character. And this experiential learning theory will guide us on how to elaborate the process of learning by experience that happens in Jack Gantos' Dead End in Norvelt by examining Jackie Gantos character and his social interaction with the people of Norvelt. RESEARCH METHOD This study takes the data source of a novel Dead End in Norvelt, written by Jack Gantos which is published in New York by Farrar Straus Giroux, with ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3 in 2012. To collect the data, the first step is Extensive Reading. Extensive reading is denoted as reading the text of novel extensively in order to collect the data of analysis, such as narrations, monologues, dialogues, quotations, and so forth. After collecting the data by reading extensively, the second step is intensive reading. This step is used in order to reveal the hidden idea of the novel which is related to the data. After finding the hidden idea of the novel, the next step is classifying the data through the novel which needed in analyzing the data, such as speech, actions, characters, behavior, attitudes, and thoughts. The third step is observation the data. This step is the most important step because this step is used in order to find out the experiential learning. In Dead End in Norvelt, The main character Jackie experiences many things that gain him knowledge throughout the novel. Therefore, the experiential learning is very appropriate to be applied to this study. Last but not least, it reaches the final process of collecting data, which is placing the classified data into the table. It is done to simplify in reading the data for the purpose of doing analysis. After finding the experiential learning through the events that correlate Jackie with the major characters based on the novel, the last step is data analysis. This step attempts to answer the questions subsequently based on the statement of the problems by using relevant theory. Besides, this step also uses the data of the novel Dead End in Norvelt which consists of monologues, dialogues, and quotations. The first statement of problem is the occurance of experiential learning. The depiction of experiential learning is using the theory of Kolb. This depiction can be seen on the events that correlate Jackie with other main characters inside the novel. The second statement of problem is the factors that causes Jackie to apply experiential learning in his life which gain him knowledge through experience with other. The factors will be analyzed by using the theory of Rummels. EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING Experiential learning is a well-known model in education. Kolb's experiential learning theory defines experiential learning as "the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experience." (1984:38) Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory (1984:42) presents a cycle of four elements: The cycle begins with an experience that the student has had, followed by an opportunity to reflect on that experience. Then students may conceptualize and draw conclusions about what they experienced and observed, leading to future actions in which the students experiment with different behaviors. This begins the cycle anew as students have new experiences based on their experimentation (Oxendine, Robinson and Willson, 2004). Although this continuum is presented as a cycle, the steps may occur in nearly any order. This learning cycle involves both concrete components (steps 1 and 4) and conceptual components (steps 2 and 3), which require a variety of cognitive and affective behaviors. Experiential learning can exist without a teacher and relates solely to the meaning of making process of the individual's direct experience. However, although the gaining of knowledge is an inherent process that occurs naturally, for a genuine learning experience to occur, there must exist certain elements. According to Kolb, knowledge is continuously gained through both personal and environmental experiences. He states that in order to gain genuine knowledge from an experience, certain abilities are required: • The learner must be willing to be actively involved in the experience; • The learner must be able to reflect on the experience; • The learner must possess and use analytical skills to conceptualize the experience; and • The learner must possess decision making and problem solving skills in order to use the new ideas gained from the experience. Experiential activities are among the most powerful teaching and learning tools available. Experiential learning requires self-initiative, an "intention to learn" and an "active phase of learning". Kolb's cycle of experiential learning can be used as a framework for considering the different stages involved. Jennifer A. Moon has elaborated on this cycle to argue that experiential learning is the most effective when it involves: 1) a "reflective learning phase" 2) a phase of learning resulting from the actions inherent to experiential learning, and 3) "a further phase of learning from feedback". This process of learning can result in "changes in judgment, feeling or skills" for the individual and can provide direction for the "making of judgments as a guide to choice and action". Most educators understand the important role of experience in the learning process. The role of emotion and feelings in learning from experience has been recognised as an important part of experiential learning.While those factors may improve the likelihood of experiential learning occurring, it can occur without them. Rather, what is vital in experiential learning is that the individual is encouraged to directly involve themselves in the experience, and then to reflect on their experiences using analytical skills, so they gain a better understanding of the new knowledge and retain the information for a longer time. Reflection is a crucial part of the experiential learning process, and like experiential learning itself, it can be facilitated or independent. Dewey wrote that "successive portions of reflective thought grow out of one another and support one another", creating a scaffold for further learning, and allowing for further experiences and reflection. This reinforces the fact that experiential learning and reflective learning are iterative processes, and the learning builds and develops with further reflection and experience. Facilitation of experiential learning and reflection is challenging, but "a skilled facilitator, asking the right questions and guiding reflective conversation before, during, and after an experience, can help open a gateway to powerful new thinking and learning". Jacobson and Ruddy, building on Kolb's four-stage Experiential Learning Model and Pfeiffer and Jones's five stage Experiential Learning Cycle, took these theoretical frameworks and created a simple, practical questioning model for facilitators to use in promoting critical reflection in experiential learning. Their "5 Questions" model is as follows: • Did you notice.? • Why did that happen? • Does that happen in life? • Why does that happen? • How can you use that? These questions are posed by the facilitator after an experience, and gradually lead the group towards a critical reflection on their experience, and an understanding on how they can apply the learning to their own life. Although the questions are simple, they allow a relatively inexperienced facilitator to apply the theories of Kolb, Pfeiffer, and Jones, and deepen the learning of the group. SOCIAL INTERACTION According to R.J. Rummel (1976: Chapter 9 : Social Behavior And Interaction) , social interactions are the acts, actions, or practices of two or more people mutually oriented towards each other's selves, that is, any behavior that tries to affect or take account of each other's subjective experiences or intentions. This means that the parties to the social interaction must be aware of each other--have each other's self in mind. This does not mean being in sight of or directly behaving towards each other. Friends writing letters are socially interacting, as are enemy generals preparing opposing war plans. Social interaction is not defined by type of physical relation or behavior, or by physical distance. It is a matter of a mutual subjective orientation towards each other. Thus even when no physical behavior is involved, as with two rivals deliberately ignoring each other's professional work, there is social interaction. Moreover, social interaction requires a mutual orientation. The spying of one on another is not social interaction if the other is unaware. Nor do the behaviors of rapist and victim constitute social interaction if the victim is treated as a physical object; nor behavior between guard and prisoner, torturer and tortured, machine gunner and enemy soldier. Indeed, wherever people treat each other as object, things, or animals, or consider each other as reflex machines or only cause-effect phenomena, there is not social interaction such interaction may comprise a system; it may be organized, controlled, or regimented. According to Arnold W Green in his book Sociology an Analysis of life in Modern Society, Social interaction is "…the mutual influences that individuals and groups have upon one another in their attempts to solve problems and in their striving toward goals. Social interaction discloses the concrete results of striving behavior upon roles, statuses, and moral norms" (Green, 1964: 57) There are two types of social interaction, structured and unstructured. Structured social interaction is guided by previously establishing definitions and expectations, owing either to familiarity with the other as a person, as among family and friends, or to knowledge of the others formal position, as between lawyer and judge in court room proceedings, unstructured encounters lack prior expectations and must be defined as required in the course of action. Although at a proposition of intimate relationships are highly structured even the most familiar partners and friends remain capable of unpredictable and novel responses in relationships infact the most interesting trends and associates are those who widely improvise. Conversely rarely do we find a situation completely lacking in structure. Even two strangers come from quite diverse backgrounds, their interactions of likely to be governed by norms of physical safety, age, sex, etc. Thus special interaction may be viewed as partly governed by pre-established rules and expectations and as partly inventive, interpretive and improvisational. TYPES OF SOCIAL INTERACTION According to Chris Levy (earthlink.net: ch.4, 2), Social interaction is divided into five points: a. Exchange: The process in which people transfer goods, services, and other items with each other. Exchange is a social process whereby social behavior is exchanged for some type of reward for equal or greater value. b. Competition: Process by which two or more people/groups attempt to obtain the same goal. Scarce resources are unequally distributed. This concept is very familiar and important to Americans considering the idea of competition is built in to our economy and society. Yet, the jury is still out whether this competition produces the assumed results of the "best rising to the top" c. Cooperation: The process in which people work together to achieved shared goals. Usually this involves the giving up of individual goals for group goals d. Conflict: The process by which people attempt to physically or socially conquer each other. Although war is the most obvious example of this, this is done most often in social situations (ex. politics, threats, etc.) e. Coercion: Process by which people compel other people to do something against their will – based ultimately on force. The state usually handles this through official means (police, army, etc.) but individuals use it in social situations as well (parents, friends, lovers – sex) f. No one type of interaction describes social reality – it involves a mix and match of different ones. SELF-REALIZATION Self-realization is a concept where people realize on their own regarding a certain event that perceived through their behavior. Mortimer Adler defines self-realization as freedom from external coercion, including cultural expectations, political and economic freedom, and the freedom from worldly attachments and desires etc. (1958: 127, 135, 149). This concept is the opposite of social interaction because self-realization occur without any social interaction. The person is free to realize his own potential by absorbing the knowledge through his own way, for example reading books, without any interference from other person. PARADIGM OF ANALYSIS The analysis will utilize Kolb's experiential learning to classify the events into two triggering factors of experiential learning, social interaction and self-realization. The classification will further explain the process of gaining knowledge. The table of Kolb's experiential learning is used to reveal the process of learning that a person went through. The process of a person learning through experience consists of Experience phase, Critical Reflection phase, Abstract phase, Active Experimentation phase and reach into a further Critical Reflection to adjust the knowledge that gained through the process. The social interaction and the self-realization is used as a triggering factor of experiential learning process. THE DEPICTION OF JACKIE GANTOS' EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING Elaborating event in the novel to show the depiction of Jackie's effort in applying experiential learning is an important process. Before elaborating the event, knowing Jackie's character first is essential. The knowledge regarding Jackie's character is important because it is used as a guidance to define the social interaction between Jackie and other character in the event, to understand Jackie relation with others, and to understand the experiential learning process. Jack is a teenager in Norvelt around age of 11 to 12, He is a curious person, a rebel, nose bleeder, a book-worm, helpful to others and also full of action. These characteristics are described throughout the novel as Jack likes to read history when he was at home. His adventures rotates about the stories in Norvelt, how he spent his summer holiday at home grounded because of gun accident and helping Miss Volker out with her obituary thing. Jack is the main character that is full of action through all the novel. Based on Kolb's experiential learning model, Jackie's character experience and learn about many things that happens in his life, especially through his social interaction with others as one of the factor to trigger experiential learning. This experiential learning process appears in events that related to Jackie's action with other character, creating a situation which lead to a learning comprehension through experience. In this section, the events will be distinguished into the most unique event showing Jackie's learning through experience. This unique event will focus on Jackie's interaction with some of the most important characters in the novel, Jackie's parent, Miss Volker, Mr. Spizz, Bunny, and Mrs. Dubicky. THE EVENTS OF JACKIE'S PARENT There are several events that involve Jackie with his parents in the novel. Some of them can be classified as unique, one of them is about the Money and Barter concept. Norvelt is a community town based on barter or trading skills with neighbors. Norvelt is created to solve Great Depression problem. At that time, money is hard to get and crops prices fell so low so business all over town is bankrupt. The concept of Money and Barter shows differences of ages between Jackie's mom in the past and present time. This event happened between Jackie and his Mom when they visit the doctor to examine Jackie's nose problem. Jackie learn about the concept of Money and Barter from the conversation with her mom which happened while Jackie is on his way home. The concept of Money and Barter is one of the unique values of knowledge that Jackie experiences in the novel. The other unique event Jackie's experience with his Dad regarding gun safety that he experienced in the past. This event is important since it builds Jackie's character to be aware and always caution regarding gun safety. To describe the social interaction happened in the event, knowing the character of Jackie's parent character is compulsory. The character of a person can define the social interaction that occur between him and other people. In a family relation, social interaction that mostly happened is cooperation between family and also conflict which bonds family members. Jackie's Mom is a caring, loving mother but is also strict about the rules at home. She forbids Jackie to play with dangerous things like guns and stuffs from the Japanese war that Jackie's dad kept at basement. "Well, don't hurt yourself," Mom warned. "And if there is blood on some of that stuff, don't touch it. You might catch something, like Japanese polio." (Gantos, 2012: 1) Her love for Jack is strong even though Jack does things that make her mad like blasting the rifle or mowing the corn row. She always reminds him to be careful because of his nosebleed problem. She's afraid that her son has iron-poor blood he may not be getting enough oxygen to his brain. (Gantos, 2012: 3) Meanwhile Jackie's dad is a former war soldier, a hardworking father, and a loving and adventurous man. He learns almost everything from his dad. No wonder Jack is so hyperactive. Jackie's Dad is also a collector. He keeps stuff from the Japanese War era to make profit when it is valuable enough. This can be seen in the quotation below. … in fact, he never let me play with it, because as he put it, "This swag will be worth a bundle of money someday, so keep your grubby hands off it."(Gantos, 2012: 1) As the story goes, Jackie will get involved in something more than just a rifle to be blasted. MISS VOLKER'S EVENTS Miss Volker is a medical examiner of the town and also the chief nurse in town. Her job is to take notes of the people health records and writes people obituary as they are passed away. Unfortunately her hands are not as good as her youth. So she asks Jackie's mom to send Jack to help her with her writing. The job was a tribute of duty from Eleanor Roosevelt and also her way to thank Mrs. Roosevelt for building Norvelt into a friendly community town. "When Mrs. Roosevelt hired me to be the chief nurse and medical examiner of this town I was given a typewriter so I could keep health records on the original two hundred and fifty families. Now it's my closing tribute to Mrs. Roosevelt that I write their final health report – which, in this case, would be their obituary…" (Gantos, 2012: 16) Miss Volker important is the main point of the novel and her relation with Jackie as her scribe invoke Jackie's learning phase in experiential learning. By helping her to write obituary, Jackie finds many things that he doesn't know before and some of the most important and unique event that binds Jackie with Miss Volker are the Eleanor Roosevelt's idealism and also the history of Norvelt. Eleanor Roosevelt's idealism is conveyed through Miss Volker speech when she was dictating Jackie to write the obituary of Mrs. Dubicki. The event gives a unique description regarding Eleanor Roosevelt's thought and idealism of a strong community based town to start a helping neighborhood so people doesn't have to depend on money which is hard to get in Depression era. She made sure that the community had real houses which include bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom with bathtub. When the government reacts to this idea, they try to reject the plan by calling it luxury living. But Mrs. Roosevelt defended the plan by saying that this is not living in luxury but it is called living with dignity. (Gantos, 2012: 88) The other event is learning about the history of Norvelt. The basic role of society is by knowing your own neighborhood history. In this novel Jackie learnt about Norvelt history from many different perspectives but most of them came from Miss Volker's obituary dictation. The most important dictation is the one when Miss Volker does the obituary for Mrs. Bloodgood because it reveals the story of how the Norvelt name truly came and also the story of equality behind the making of Norvelt as one of the role model for every town in the United States of America. MRS. DUBICKI'S EVENTS Mrs. Dubicki is the old woman at the house of C-27. She is a loner and a grumpy person. There was a time when Mr. Spizz hands her ticket for having an old shabby house, she chase him with her husband's double-barreled shotgun. "This is her house," she said. "She hasn't painted it since 1934. I like Mrs. Dubicki because that busybody Spizz gave her a ticket for having a shabby-looking house and she chased him off the property with her dead husband's double-barreled shotgun." (Gantos, 2012: 47) After Jackie visited her in a disguise with Miss Volker to check about her, she reveals her polite side and also a loving grandparent since she didn't want to miss her grandson's birthday on July third. The appearances of Mrs. Dubicki in this novel is important because she plays an important role in helping Jackie learns about disguising skill, driving skill and also Eleanor Roosevelt's idealism. Eleanor Roosevelt's idealism has been described on the above section, it also correlates Jackie with Mrs. Dubicki since he learnt about Eleanor Roosevelt's idealism on the dictation of Mrs. Dubicki obituary. Eleanor Roosevelt is fond of Jeffersonian principle that later shaped the planning of Norvelt. She also agrees to Jefferson that every American should have a house with fertile property to be used as a farming site so when money was difficult to come by, a man and woman could always grow crops and have enough food to feed their family (Gantos, 2012: 97). Regarding Jackie's driving skill and his disguising skill, he learnt about all that when he was accompanying Miss Volker on an investigation on Mrs. Dubicki's missing a church appointment which then create a rumor of Mrs. Dubicki already resting in peace at her home. That's why Jackie tries to disguise himself to avoid a false information and he can get away without having to worry about trespassing someone else house. MR. SPIZZ'S EVENTS Mr. Spizz's events are considered important because Mr. Spizz works for the Norvelt Public Good whose objective is to create a law abiding situation for the good of the neighborhood. Mr. Spizz is a man who feel that he is the most important man in the town, he acts like a sheriff regardless his appearance running around in a giant tricycle. He secretly love Miss Volker since 1912, sending her a box of chocolate every week. …. It read, I'm still ready, willing and waiting. Your swain since 1912 with the patience of Job. – Edwin Spizz." (Gantos, 2012: 9) He usually looks bossy, law abiding man as he is strict about rules like grass tall law and house paint job law of the community. He always sticks to the rules and always reminded people in the neighborhood. Mr. Spizz's events is considered important since Jackie always met Mr. Spizz in the crime scene of the death of old women. But some of the most important events are Jackie's deal with Mr. Spizz and the murderer of old women. In Jackie's deal with Mr. Spizz, Jackie helps Mr. Spizz to buy a tin can of 1080 poison for an exchange of forgetting the gutter weed ticket fine and also ending the runway zoning law problem that Mr. Spizz wrung about with Jackie's Dad airplane project. The other event is the murderer of old women. This event takes place at the end of the novel when Mr. Spizz confessed to Miss Volker regarding the murderer that he has done in Norvelt. Jackie found out the story after saving Miss Volker from the basement. The social interaction happened in the events that include Mr. Spizz are coercion and conflict. This happened because Jackie always clashes with Mr. Spizz in one way or another. The example is the gutter ticket and Jackie's Dad runway. BUNNY'S EVENTS Bunny is a close friend of Jackie. She is a small, funny, brave and sometimes freaky girl with an enormous energy among her. … Bunny was a girl the size of one of Santa's little helpers. She was so short she could run full speed under her dining room table without ducking. She'd take double position at shortstop and second base… Because she grew up in a house full of dead people she wasn't afraid of anything." (Gantos, 2012: 27) She is not an ordinary girl, regarding the fact that her daily routine was watching her dad prepare the dead. Her dad, Mr. Huffer is the man who prepares dead body before burial. He owned the only funeral parlor in town. The events that correlate Jackie with Bunny is unique. The conversation related to the unique preparation of the dead for funeral give Jackie knowledge. He gain the knowledge that to prepare dead body you must sew the mouth shut so it doesn't open again. Other example of the event is the Hufferville plan. Jackie found out the plan after meeting up with Bunny to accompany her fire patrol duty. The plan give Jackie the knowledge that Mr. Huffer tried to expand his business to another kind of business, which is a plan to build a new town on the land of Norvelt by buying all the land and moving the old house to another location. The social interaction that mostly happened between Jackie and Bunny are cooperation, coercion and also conflict. These social interaction mostly happened in a close friend relationship and it is natural to have a coercion and conflict in this kind of relationship. THE INFLUENCING FACTORS OF JACKIE'S APPLYING EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING IN HIS LIFE To find out the elements of experiential learning the analysis will be divided into two different factors. The first one is the analysis which use social interaction found in the conversation between Jackie and other characters and the action that happened between Jackie and other characters that create an experience reward to be learned by Jackie. The second one is the analysis which doesn't involve any social interaction at all. So in this second analysis Jackie gain experience through his own critical thinking which can be called self-realization. This analysis will focus on Jackie's experience in reading history books and Jackie's thought. EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING INVOLVES SOCIAL INTERACTION The analysis will be divided into two parts, the conversation part between Jackie and other character in the novel and the other is Jackie's actual experience throughout the novel. The experience can be classified according to the type of social interaction that has been described in chapter two above. Conversation is the basic social interaction that happened between people in life. Conversation is a form of interactive, spontaneous communication between two or more people who are following rules of etiquette. It is a polite give and take of subjects thought of by people talking with each other for company (Conklin, 1912: 22). Conversation used as a tool to deliver thought of a person to another person. Occasionally, the conversation consist of small talk but it also may consist of something intelligent for example a conversation about history fact, which appears a lot in this novel, and other information on special topic such as war experience. In this part, the conversation will be focused on Jackie's conversation with other characters in the novel that generalize in some specific topic conveyed through the event. The first event considered an important experience learning is the conversation related to Eleanor Roosevelt and her Idealism. This event give Jackie knowledge on Eleanor Roosevelt's historical background in building Norvelt and also her Idealism through her point of view. Eleanor Roosevelt's idealism of living in dignity and living without fear of having no money conveyed in Norvelt town. It is originally her idea to build a community town that release the wrath of economic depression by sustaining life through helping each other out. Jackie learns this through several conversation portrayed inside the novel. Norvelt originally comes through a mind of Eleanor Roosevelt. The mind of having a community based town to increase the standard living of the coal miners. The first conversation about Eleanor Roosevelt appears between Jackie and Mr. Fenton. I had asked Mr. Fenton about it and he said he wanted a hundred bucks because it had historic value. "Eleanor Roosevelt was driven around Norvelt in it," …. Every time her name was mentioned everything went up in price, which was so backward because she wanted everything to go down in price. (Gantos, 2012: 21) Eleanor Roosevelt wanted to build a strong community within Norvelt, to start a helping neighborhood so people doesn't have to depend on money like they used to. Since the great depression era, Norvelt becomes a model community to start living in a better standard. This can be seen in the next quotation. "But Godmother Roosevelt came to the rescue. She made sure people had real houses - little New England-style houses – and they had bedrooms and a living room and a useful kitchen and a bathroom with a bathtub, and even a laundry room with washing machine. The government called this luxury living. But Mrs. Roosevelt called it living with dignity." (Gantos, 2012: 88) Eleanor Roosevelt fought for the people, to make sure they had a deserved place to live in. She especially fond of the principle of Thomas Jefferson the third President of USA that every American should have a house enough to plant their own food in their property. This is to maintain that when money was hard to get, they can still living by growing crops to feed their own family. This is also depicted in the quotation below when Miss Volker is making the obituary for Mrs. Dubicki. "Mrs. Roosevelt was especially fond of a Jeffersonian principle that shaped the planning of Norvelt. Jefferson believed that every American should have a house large enough piece of fertile property so that during hard times, when money was difficult to come by, a man and woman could always grow crops and have enough food to feed their family. Jefferson believed that the farmer was the key to America and that a well-run family farm was a model for a well-run government. Mrs. Roosevelt felt the same. And we in Norvelt keep that belief alive." (Gantos, 2012: 97) Jackie learns a bit of history of Norvelt and also the principal idea of Eleanor Roosevelt that wants to bring Norvelt family into a role model for every town in the United States. This intelligence came from a conversational subject between Jackie and Mr. Fenton and also Jackie and Miss Volker. The process of experiential learning can be seen on the table below. The event between Jackie and Bunny is the preparation of a dead man. In this event, Jackie learns about how the dead being prepared for the last tribute. This event occurs in a conversation between Jackie and Bunny while they were playing baseball on the field. Bunny was asking about Jackie's doing obituary for Mrs. Slater for the paper. She think that it was well written. So she gives Jackie a gift, dentures from Mrs. Slater funeral preparation. Jackie was surprised to know that Bunny had Mrs. Slater dentures. He thought that it was buried with Mrs. Slater body. Then Bunny tells him a story about how to prepare a dead body for funeral viewing. "You don't know anything about preparing dead people for a viewing," she bragged. "If you'll notice, the stiffs are always displayed with their mouths closed because my dad has to sew their mouths shut. If they don't have real teeth you just sew their gums together which is actually easier, so we keep the dentures. Dad saves them because when he gets a boxful he donates them to the retirement home and some of those old people reuse them." "You really have to sew the mouth shut?" I asked. That stunned me. It seemed so brutal. "With an upholstery needle and twine," she added, knowing she was making me nervous. "It's like sewing up a turkey after you stuff it, is how my dad puts it." (Gantos, 2012: 30) Bunny tells him about how his dad sews the dead's mouth to prevent them from opening. And she also tells him about how the dentures are being kept. Because if someone doesn't have teeth it is easier to sew the gum where the teeth belong rather than to keep the dentures inside. The dentures will be donated to the old house to be reused by seniors. Bunny also describes the sewing session was like sewing up turkey for Thanksgiving. Imagining it was already too much for Jackie as his nose starting to bleed. This makes Bunny curious and ask Jackie about what happened to his nose. And then Jackie tell Bunny about how his sickness correlated on all things, fear, excited, startled, imagining scary stuff and etc. I felt my blood surge like a tidal wave toward my face. "Are you always like this?" she asked, and pointed her stubby hand at my nose. "Yes," I croaked, and wiped away a few drops of blood. "You should see a doctor," she advised. "It's nothing," I said. "I have a very sensitive nose. Anything makes it bleed." (Gantos, 2012: 30) This event helps Jackie to understand more about how to prepare dead body for a funeral. It also helps him to share his problem about his nose to Bunny. It makes Jackie feels comfortable even though he had nose that bleeds a lot. The event of preparing dead body can be disassembled through the table below: Experience Bunny tells Jackie about how to prepare dead people for funeral viewing Critical Reflection Bunny reflected on the event in past about his dad sewing the dead's mouth Active Experimentation Bunny tell Jackie that the process of sewing the mouth was just like sewing up turkey Abstract Bunny explain further about how the dentures are being kept if the body doesn't have teeth Further Critical Reflection Jackie knew about how to prepare dead men. And Bunny knew about Jackie's sickness and what triggers his nose to bleed. EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING WITHOUT SOCIAL INTERACTION This part of analysis will conveyed events that happens in the novel which involving Jackie as the only person who experience it. It occurs without any social interaction with other character. Self-realization is a concept where people realize on their own regarding a certain event that perceived through their behavior. Mortimer Adler defines self-realization as freedom from external coercion, including cultural expectations, political and economic freedom, and the freedom from worldly attachments and desires etc. (1958: 127, 135, 149). In this novel, the self-realization comes into the mind of Jackie Gantos who realize his action and try to comprehend the effect of his action. The first event that reveal the concept of self-realization is the event of Jackie's rifle. In this part of the story, Jackie is playing with his dad rifle. The old Japanese rifle is still working well, so even though Jackie knew it was dangerous he still plays with it but he let loose the ammo clip to make sure it was not blasting accidentally. I lifted the rifle again and swung the tip of the barrel straight up into the air. I figured I could gradually lower the barrel at the screen, aim, and pick off one of the Japanese troops. With all my strength I slowly lowered the barrel and held it steady enough to finally get the ball centered inside the V, and when I saw a tiny Japanese soldier leap out of a bush I quickly pulled the trigger and let him have it. BLAM! The rifle fired off and violently kicked out of my grip. It flipped into the air before clattering down across the picnic table and sliding onto the ground. … (Gantos, 2012: 4) Based on the narration above, there are no social interaction that happened. According to R.J. Rummels, social interaction requires a mutual orientation. (Hawaii.edu, pars 8) This mean that there must be two or more person available in the interaction and they must be aware of each other. So the text above only represent experiential learning. It only happened because of Jackie's action, playing with his Dad's Japanese rifle. There is no other person involved in and there are on mutual orientation happened. The elaboration of the theory can be seen below on the table. Active Experimentation The rifle's blasting a bullet through the neighborhood yard Abstract Jackie aiming his rifle and pull the triggers like an actual soldier Experience Jackie playing with rifle Critical Reflection Jackie watching war movie and pretend to be a soldier Further Critical Reflection Jackie confuse and try to comprehend about what happened to the gun, why did it blast off and try to be more safe with gun in the future The table explains about how Kolb's experiential learning theoryworks in this novel. Experience is the first event that take notice of Jack playing with his Dad Japanese rifle. Critical Reflection tells us about Jackie's thought about his new toy by watching a war movie and pretend to be a soldier. Abstract is the conceptualization of Jackie's thought about being an actual soldier by aiming his rifle and pull the triggers as if he is in war. Then the Active Experimentation shows the cause of Jackie's action for playing with his gun. At last Jackie made another further Critical Reflection by showing his confusion about the matter and try to comprehend about what happened to the gun, why it blasted off and he will try to be more careful with gun in the future. The War concept is the next event that appear as a self-realization of Jackie. War is a devastating event. Jackie's dad is a former marine in World War II so when Jack was digging the bomb shelter he usually asked about war stuff to his dad. In chapter 9, Jackie asked his Dad about war. "Hey, Dad" I called behind him as he walked toward the tractor. "Which do you think is more deadly? Past history or future history?" He didn't even slow down to think about it. "Future history." He yelled back without hesitation. "Each war gets worse because we get better at killing each other." (Gantos, 2012: 52) Jackie then think about his dad statement and began to comprehend about war in the past such as the quotation below. That sounded so true. At first caveman bashed each other's heads in with rocks and sticks. By the time of the Crusaders it was long swords and arrows, and at Gettysburg they were blasting each other to bits from cannons filled with lead balls, iron chains, railroad spikes, and door knobs. And atomic bombs made future wars look even more hopeless. (Gantos, 2012: 52) He then think about the result of a nuclear war, the effect on earth and also the animals and human being after the radiation take effect. No humans will survive. All the animals will die. Fish will rot in acidic water. All vegetarian will wilt in the polluted air. There will be nothing left but enormous insects the size of dinosaurs. (Gantos, 2012: 52) Jackie then continue to march on his job to dig a bomb shelter. Knowing that the future might get worse than he thinks and the only hope for survival might be by building cities underground just like his Dad used to say that the army built one to protect the president and all the self-important government people. Jackie self-realization appear in the event after his dad tell him about how future war is more deadly because we get better in killing people. He then began to think about the war, how it effects on human life. Another war concept appear in Miss Volker dictation about Mrs. Vinyl when she entered the history part regarding the Hiroshima incident. " … Most people think that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was necessary for ending the war." She continued. "And there is some truth to that, given that the Japanese were prepared to fight to the last person to protect their country. But what the atomic bombing of Hiroshima should teach everyone is that you don't win the war by being more moral or ethical or nicer or more democratic than your enemy. And God has nothing to do with winning or losing. … You win a war by being tougher and meaner and more ruthless than your enemy. You beat, burn, and crush them into the ground. This is the historic rule of winning a war. …" (Gantos, 2012: 126) But in this part Jackie learn by listening to Miss Volker speech about the obituary, which is not his own self-realization. So, this analysis regarding the Hiroshima incident will not appear in the experiential learning because the table will only focus on the self-realization part of Jackie's thought about the war. Actual Experimentation Jackie then think about how the caveman fight, and goes throughout history until the atomic incident Experience Jackie digging a bomb shelter he then asked his dad about the war Critical Reflection His dad then answer without doubt that future history is more deadly Abstract His dad give a clear perspective about how war in the future is more deadly by giving statement that people get better at killing people in the future Further Critical Reflection Agreeing his dad, he continued to dig for bomb shelter in hope for a future save compartment when they enter the future history war. CONCLUSION Based on the recent analysis, the result can be concluded that experiential learning appear through events that Jackie's going through in his summer holiday in Norvelt. Those event occured between Jackie and other characters in the novel. Jackie's parents, Miss Volker, Mr Spizz, and Bunny are some of the most important characters that build Jackie's intellectual mind. Experiential learning occured because of the influencing factors, the social interaction that happened between Jackie and the other characters in the novel and also Jackie's self-realization. The first conclusion is concerning about how the experiential learning happened. The experiential learning appeared because of the events that depict the learning process between Jackie and other characters in the novel. The experiential learning is represented through the Kolb's experiential learning table so the process of experiential learning can be seen clearly. The experience table shows the event of social interaction between Jackie and the other characters, or the event of self-realization by Jackie himself. These experience table then proceeds into a critical reflection of the problem and encourages Jackie to think about the event which stimulate an abstract conceptualization of the event. Jackie then actively experimented on the abstract that he created from the previous table, to gain a concrete experience which then enabled him to get knowledge regarding the matter. Jackie then created a further reflection of the experience, and think about the result of the experience. This further critical reflection create a scaffold for further learning, and allow for further experiences and reflection.Critical reflection reinforces the fact that experiential learning and reflective learning a
