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Patron banning is widely used in response to disorderly behaviours in/around licensed venues, but there has been limited analysis of specific policies. This paper explores key findings in relation to police-imposed barring notices in Western Australia (WA).

WA Police provided de-identified data for 4,023 barring notices imposed between 2011 and 2020 and offender records for each recipient, to 30 June 2020. The data were analysed to identify patterns and trends in relation to ban length, recipient type and associated offending.

Mean ban lengths increased across the period (from 4.46 months in 2015 to 6.82 months in 2019). Longer initial bans (of 6–12 months) were associated with a lower likelihood of a subsequent ban – with each additional month associated with an 11.4% increase in the likelihood of not receiving a second ban. Across the dataset, some notable anomalies were identified for individuals categorised as prolific offenders.

Research examining the effects of patron banning is limited but, to date, has generally not supported presumptions of improved patron behaviour. WA adopts an individualised approach to barring notice lengths, following review of the incident and offender. The findings suggest that, while barring policy is appropriate, a number of operational refinements can help WA Police to optimise their behavioural effect/s.

Alcohol-related disorder in Australia’s night-time economy has precipitated an expanding regulatory and legislative framework. A key feature is the growth of police-imposed discretionary justice, one example of which are Victoria’s banning provisions. Banning notices are imposed on-the-spot, may be issued pre-emptively, but permit no right of independent appeal. However, there has been little analysis of the enactment, implementation or use of police-imposed banning provisions. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper draws upon a detailed examination of the record of parliamentary debate of the banning notice legislation to document how the provisions, and their embedded procedural vulnerabilities, were legitimised. In addition, an analysis of Victoria Police data informs consideration of the ongoing scrutiny of the police power to ban.

The absolute discretion afforded to police officers, and a lack of effective oversight, has created the potential for the disproportionate and discriminatory implementation of Victoria’s banning notice powers. The findings highlight procedural vulnerabilities within the provisions, and concern regarding the particular risk of banning notices for vulnerable recipients.

The nature of Victoria’s banning provisions created the circumstances for their inequitable imposition, but public scrutiny of their use and effect is limited. Omissions and deficiencies in the published data restricts meaningful analysis of how banning works in practice.

The research underpinning this paper was the first detailed examination of the implementation and ongoing scrutiny of Victoria’s banning notice provisions. The findings presented in this paper highlight key procedural vulnerabilities resulting from the passage of the legislation and the absence of effective oversight.

Presents the views of farmers and growers on the use of biotechnology in the production of food. Identifies many significant benefits for consumers and producers. However, the National Farmers’ Union has a number of concerns about the technology, and recognizes that farmers and growers will have a key role to play in the responsible use of the technology.

Agriculture in Ethiopia relies heavily on traditional farm power sources and is designated by the lowest farm machinery access, in contrast to other Sub-Sahara African (SSA) countries. The purpose of this research is to analyze the heterogeneity of mechanization service transactions and factors determining farmers' cooperation in mechanization clusters and willingness to accept land consolidation.

The authors conducted a cross-sectional survey of producer households in major crop production areas in the Oromia, SNNPR, Amhara and Tigray regions. The sampling design involved three stages: districts were selected using a stratified sampling approach accompanied by simple random samples of kebele units and producer households in the second and final stages, respectively.

This study’s results show that mechanization service costs, service relationships, clustering and land consolidation exhibit significant heterogeneity across the study areas. Cluster farming was found to be advantageous against diseconomies, rationalized by upgrading the mechanization scale. The probit model parameterization of the probability distributions reveals that household, land, crop, mechanization service, remoteness and location-related factors determine participation in mechanization clusters and willingness to accept land consolidation.

Fostering cooperation by focusing on constraints and demand of users is suggested to reduce transaction costs and expand hired mechanization services to unaddressed areas. The findings are relevant to most SSA countries where mechanization development is hampered by land fragmentation.

Limited information is available on agricultural mechanization development for smallholder farmers, particularly in Ethiopia, and this study adds empirical evidence about the synergy between cluster farming and mechanization, horizontal coordination and alternative supply models.

This paper aims to explore pathways in which adaptation challenges may occur. Focus is on the barriers to adaptation, challenges to adaptation and maladaptation with reference to smallholder farmers in the Southern African Development Community region.

Bibliometric analysis techniques were used to track the literature on smallholder farmers’ adaptation challenges. Web of Science was the main data source. A total of 41 articles were retained for analysis and exported into Visualization of Similarities Viewer Software where the development of research on the subject, co-occurrence of keywords analysis, top publishers, citations and total link strength was done.

Results indicate that research on smallholder farmers’ adaptation challenges is not new but has gained more consideration post-2020. The main adaptation challenges emanate from perception barriers and constraints based on determinants of adoption, limitations for resilience building and achieving sustainable adaptation as well as contestations around Climate Smart Agriculture technologies.

Effective design of adaptation policies should center on prioritizing the needs of the local people. This would reduce the occurrences of smallholder farmers’ adaptation challenges, promote resilience building and contribute toward achieving sustainable adaptation.

It is equally important to document adaptation challenges. However, adaptation challenges are rarely shared with the same enthusiasm as its successes. This work focuses on the matter with the intention of conscientizing smallholder farmers to reduce the risk of repeating the same adaptation mistakes.

Conservation agriculture-based wheat production system (CAW) can serve as an ex ante measure to minimize loss due to climate risks, especially the extreme rainfall during the wheat production season in India. This study aims to examine whether farmers learn from their past experiences of exposure to climate extremes and use the knowledge to better adapt to future climate extremes.

The authors used data collected from 184 farmers from Haryana over three consecutive wheat seasons from 2013-2014 to 2015-2016 and multivariate logit model to analyse the driver of the adoption of CAW as an ex ante climate risk mitigating strategies based on their learning and censored Tobit model to analyse the intensity of adoption of CAW as an ex ante climate risk mitigation strategy. Farmer’s knowledge and key barriers to the adoption of CAW were determined through focus group discussions.

The analysis shows that the majority of farmers who had applied CAW in the year 2014-2015 (a year with untimely excess rainfall during the wheat season) have continued to practice CAW and have increased the proportion of land area allocated to it. Many farmers shifted from CTW to CAW in 2015-2016.

While farmers now consider CAW as an ex ante measure to climate risks, a technology knowledge gap exists, which limits its adoption. Therefore, designing appropriate methods to communicate scientific evidence is crucial.

This paper uses three years panel data from 184 farm households in Haryana, India, together with focus groups discussions with farmers and interviews with key informants to assess if farmers learn adaptation to climate change from past climate extremes.

The purpose of this paper is to use a linked-farm approach and a cohort approach to estimate farm entry and exit rates using the US Census of Agriculture. The number of new farms entering agriculture was re-estimated and adjusted upward since not all new and beginning farmers are known to US Department of Agriculture.

In addition to a linked-farm approach (linking farms over time), a cohort approach (farms that started operating in the same year) is used to determine exit rates conditional on the number of years a farm has been operating. Linear forecasting, moving-average forecasting, and using data from a later Census are used to re-estimate the number of new farms in their first year of operating.

Using the linked-farm approach, an average annual entry rate of 7.5 percent and exit rate of 8.5 percent is estimated for 2007 to 2012, which vary based on the farmer’s lifecycle. The cohort approach shows that exit rates are lower than 4 percent for the first 40 years of operating a farm business and then exit rates gradually increase. Revised estimates of approximately 70-80,000 new farms entering each year are calculated, which are considerably higher numbers than the 30-40,000 new farm entrants participating in the Census of Agriculture.

The linked-farm and cohort approaches are used to provide updated estimates for farm entry and exit using new Census data and to make comparisons with previous years. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to provide revised estimates for new farm entrants into US agriculture.

Our Dublin correspondent telegraphed last night:

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors associated with farm financial success for those farms known to produce for local supply chains. The analysis considers alternative measures of farm financial performance and considers the role of the local foods supply chain in the choice to market locally.

The paper uses a two-stage Heckman approach which addresses the possibility of sample selection bias. In the first stage, the choice model to engage in direct marketing is estimated. In the second stage, the authors estimate a model of the financial performance of those in the sample that direct marketed which includes an IMR term calculated from the parameters of the first stage equation. The analysis uses national farm-level data from the Agricultural and Resource Management Survey of the US Department of Agriculture and combines data from 2009 to 2012 to overcome the constraint of small samples.

Indicators of the development of a local foods supply were positively related to the choice to engage in direct marketing. Factors affecting farm financial performance varied significantly between a short-term and a long-term measure. The results emphasize the importance of considering multiple outcome measures, developing local supply chains and provide implications about beginning farms.

If a local foods system is going to thrive, the farms that market the agricultural products in the local food system must attain a certain level of profitability. The value of the analysis is an improved understanding of the financial performance of farms producing for a small, but growing segment of the food supply chain.

The Corporation of the City of London are about to appoint a Public Analyst, and by advertisement have invited applications for the post. It is obviously desirable that the person appointed to this office should not only possess the usual professional qualifications, but that he should be a scientific man of high standing and of good repute, whose name would afford a guarantee of thoroughness and reliability in regard to the work entrusted to him, and whose opinion would carry weight and command respect. Far from being of a nature to attract a man of this stamp, the terms and conditions attaching to the office as set forth in the advertisement above referred to are such that no self‐respecting member of the analytical profession, and most certainly no leading member of it, could possibly accept them. It is simply pitiable that the Corporation of the City of London should offer terms, and make conditions in connection with them, which no scientific analyst could agree to without disgracing himself and degrading his profession. The offer of such terms, in fact, amounts to a gross insult to the whole body of members of that profession, and is excusable only—if excusable at all—on the score of utter ignorance as to the character of the work required to be done, and as to the nature of the qualifications and attainments of the scientific experts who are called upon to do it. In the analytical profession, as in every other profession, there are men who, under the pressure of necessity, are compelled to accept almost any remuneration that they can get, and several of these poorer, and therefore weaker, brethren will, of course, become candidates for the City appointment.