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To analyze information use in agricultural science PhD theses submitted between 1986 and 2002 in the Faculty of Agronomy, Central University of Venezuela (UCV).

The source of information was the UCV Faculty of Agronomy, Library's database, “Tesis”. The unidimensional production and use indicators analyzed included: scientific production, reference density, self‐citations, document contemporaneousness and type of documents cited, reference scattering and accessibility of the journals cited.

The analysis of the data obtained from 4,646 bibliographic references in 42 agricultural science PhD theses provides insight into information use in a Venezuelan agricultural science community. The mean number of references per thesis found was 113 ± 21. The number of women earning a PhD in agriculture was observed to grow. The percentage of self‐citations varied widely. The half‐life was 11 years and the Price's Index 22 per cent. According to the distribution by document type, most of the publications cited were articles in journals, while references to technical standards and internet publications were rare. UCV Faculty of Agronomy PhD students tended to seek information primarily in the Anglo Saxon literature. The Celestino Bonfanti Library periodicals section met a high proportion (92 per cent) of the demand for journals located in the first and second concentration‐scattering zones.

This is the only paper on the evaluation of PhD theses in Venezuela. The findings will be useful for education planners in Venezuela and other developing countries.

In Brazil, the city of Pelotas experienced an economic apex between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, reflecting in the construction of several buildings. The aim of this article is to evaluate the state of degradation of the facades of the Old School of Agronomy Eliseu Maciel, using qualitative and quantitative indicators.

The study was divided into visual and photographic survey, damage map and subsequent application of the Degradation Measurement Method (MMD) and the Element Performance Index (Ip). Taking into consideration the evaluation of the building: through historical research and survey of damages. Finally, the building was framed at a level of degradation.

By calculating the average damage between the methods – damage map, MMD and Ip – a more faithful representation of the damage was obtained, since the values become balanced. The results show the potential of the use of the methods in the analysis of pathological manifestations in facades.

The originality of this article refers to the use of methods for evaluation of historical buildings. The authors believe that the methods described applied jointly provide the results about the state of degradation through nondestructive and low-cost analyses. The methods of surveying damage to Brazilian heritage are a little researched area. This work will hopefully be engaged by academics and professionals to help establish and promote broad government interest and investments.

This paper aims to explore the characteristics of knowledge diffusion in library and information science (LIS) to reveal the impact of knowledge in LIS on other disciplines and the disciplinary status of LIS.

Taking the 573 highly cited papers (HCP) of LIS during the years 2000–2019 in Web of Science and 85,638 papers citing them from non-LIS disciplines as the analysis object, this paper analysed the disciplines to which the citing papers belonged regarding the Biglan model, and the topics and their characteristics of the citing disciplines using latent Dirichlet allocation topic clustering.

The results showed that the knowledge in LIS was exported to multiple disciplines and topics. (1) Citations from other disciplines were overall increasing, and the main citing disciplines, mainly from applied science disciplines, were medicine, computer science, management, economics, education, sociology, psychology, journalism and communication, earth science, engineering, biology, political science, chemistry and agronomy. However, those disciplines had fewer citations to LIS during for the years from 2000 to 2004, with rapid growth in the next three time periods. (2) The citing papers had various topics and showed an increasing trend in quantity. Moreover, topics of different disciplines from 2000 to 2019 had various characteristics.

From the perspective of discipline and topic, this study analyses papers citing the HCP of LIS from non-LIS disciplines, revealing the impact of knowledge in LIS on other disciplines.

Social marketing theories have habituated to a theoretical and methodological focus that is criticised for being myopic and stigmatising. Following recommendations to redirect focus theoretically, the purpose of this paper is to apply an observational methodology to understanding how project stakeholders interact to examine whether consideration of stakeholders can identify factors facilitating or impeding farming practice change.

More than 48 events involving as many as 150 people including project stakeholder meetings, one-on-one consultations and annual events were observed over more than 100 h by between one and five researchers. Field notes were gathered, and thematic coding focussed on understanding how stakeholders facilitated or impeded practice change.

Observations identified limited provision of information about the project by on ground project stakeholders to targeted individuals (farmers). On the rare occasions where information sharing was observed, communication was delayed making it difficult for individuals to connect actions with outcomes observed. Participating stakeholders did not freely support delivery of activities needed for individual practice change.

This study indicates the value of wider process and outcome assessment encompassing stakeholders to identify factors impeding and facilitating farming practice change.

Approaches that centre attention on individuals fail to acknowledge the inputs, activities and outputs delivered by project stakeholders within a system of change. By redirecting evaluation focus, shared responsibility is gained and stigmatisation of one stakeholder group can be avoided.

This study demonstrates how observations can be used to redirect focus to consider actions and interactions occurring between on ground project stakeholders. A stakeholder evaluation approach extends monitoring and evaluation focus beyond individuals targeted for behaviour change. Implications, limitations and future research directions are outlined.

Major pillar of Via Campesina in Brazil, the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra – MST) political platform combines land reform and agro-ecology, claiming for a profound change in the hegemonic agriculture model in the country, hoisting the ‘food sovereignty’ flag. However, this was not a linear trajectory. Focusing on events that took place in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the birthplace of the MST, this chapter aims to analyse the different path followed by MST there in order to consolidate the ‘conquered’ settlements. The organization approached, initially, a network of technicians and social organizations critics of the technological package of the Green Revolution in Brazil. Afterwards, choose to support the deployment of conventional agriculture in the agrarian reform settlements, prioritizing collective organization of labour through cooperatives of production, practicing an agriculture based in the intensive use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers and commercial seed varieties. Thanks to the growing international connections of the MST, that paved the way for the creation of Via Campesina, and to the proximity to ‘militant technicians’ coming mainly from the agronomy student movement, in the end of the 1990s, MST resumed its dialogue with alternative agriculture strands, particularly with agro-ecology, campaigning for an agriculture based on principles of environmental conservation and valorization of the peasant way of life.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a novel interval Multi-Objective Optimization by a Ratio Analysis plus the Full Multiplicative Form(MULTIMOORA) with combination weights to evaluate the employment quality of college graduates, where the criteria are expressed by interval numbers and the weights of criteria are completely unknown.

Firstly, considering the subjective uncertainty of the weights of the criteria, the interval best worst method (I-BWM) was present to determine the subjective weights of the criteria. Secondly, by the improved interval number distance measure, an improved interval deviation maximization method (I-MDM) was introduced to detemine the objective weights. In the following, based on the I-BWM and the improved I-MDM, a combination weighting method that takes into account the subjective and objective weights is proposed. Finally, a multi-criteria decision-making method based on the interval MULTIMOORA with combination weights is present to evaluate the employment quality of college graduates, and then a comparative analysis with some of the existing distance measures of interval numberswas conducted to illustrate the flexibility.

According to the data of the Report on Employment Quality of Chinese College Graduats released by Mycos Research Institute in 2016–2020 and 2021–2022, the proposed method was used to evaluate the employment quality of college graduates during the period before and after the COVID-19 epidemic. The results verify that the method is more reasonable because the subjective and objective weights of the criteria can be fully considered. Finally, the feasibility and practicability of the proposed method are further verified by varying parameters.

Present an evaluation method on the employment quality of college graduates based on the Interval MULTIMOORA with combination weights considering the subjective and objective weights. And the proposed method is proved that it can provide a more reasonable evaluation results. At the same time, it is verified that the feasibility and the practicability of the proposed method are affected by varying parameters in the paper.

The Millennium Development Goals and Agenda 21 objectives have generated international research initiatives in the emerging field of urban agriculture (UA); these efforts in productive growing and food production in the urban domain are gaining pre-eminence. UA was first coined in the 80s by agro-economists who recognized informal gardening practices in southern cities (Ba et all), but it no longer is uniquely associated to the South. UA includes a broad rage of activities: the cultivation of plants, medicinal and aromatic herbs, fruit trees, and the raising of animals, poultry and fish to support the household economy, the site's ecology, as well as social and cultural activities. Thus, UA cuts across multiple disciplines - such as development, urban geography, food security, city planning, landscape architecture, urban design, housing, farming and agronomy - all of which are touched upon by the academic and professional contributors in this special issue of Open House International.

Vehicular road traffic may represent an important soil and plant contamination source. In this context, the concentration of heavy metals (Cd, Pb, As, Sb, Ni, Cu, Fe, Al, Mn and Zn) and macronutrients (Ca, Mg, K and P) was evaluated in yerba mate (Ilex paraguariensis St. Hil.) cultivations and in soils adjacent to highways.

The investigated yerba mate cultivations were located in southern Brazil. Plant tissue (young and old leaves and branches) and soil (0–10 cm) samples were collected at five distances from the highway (0–10, 10–20, 20–30, 30–40 and 40–50 m). Plant tissue was analyzed with and without washing to evaluate contributions from particulate deposition.

Although increases in soil pseudo-total concentrations of Cd, Cu, Ni, Zn, Fe, Mn, Ca and Mg were observed only at the Erechim site, geoaccumulation indices and enrichment factors (EFs) did not indicate any heavy metal pollution. These results indicate the existence of natural variation in soil. Cadmium was more concentrated in branches than in leaves, while the opposite was observed for Pb. High levels of Mn and Al were found in foliar tissue. In summary, highway proximity did not lead to heavy metal contamination of yerba mate under the evaluated conditions.

This research explores the possibility of heavy metal pollution in plantations of yerba mate adjacent to highways and indicates natural concentrations of toxic elements that exceed current legislation, which was an important discovery regarding the yerba mate production chain.

The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of mobile phone usage on sales and profit as the indicator of business performance, to analyse the facilitating roles of mobile phones and factors affecting farmers' decision to use the mobile phone in agribusiness activities.

Intensive farming was selected in this study due to its higher profitability than other crops. Data were compiled from field surveys of 1,040 farmer households in vegetable production regions of Indonesia. This study employed structural equation modelling, identifying mediating variables and quantifying multiple endogenous variables' direct and indirect effects in simultaneous regression equations.

The results indicate that mobile phone usage enabled farmers to increase sales, obtain market information, acquire improved agronomic technology, access credit and contact customers. The device enhanced profit through mediations of high sales, reasonable prices and access to credit and market information. The personal attributes of farmers determined the adoption of mobile phones to support agribusiness activities.

This study paid attention to the use of mobile phones, which was considered an integral technology of information and communication. Other components, such as personal computers and other Internet-based devices, need further study.

As the rate of mobile phone use was still low, farmers should be encouraged to utilise the device. Socialisation and specially designed training workshops on agribusiness information systems using mobile phones are of the best ways.

Using structural equation modelling enables to analyse of multi-dependent variables in one model. Farm-level data provide a real situation, and policy implications should address the right target. The subject of this investigation is a semi-subsistence farm household that lacked access to information and communication technology.