International Journal of Sustainable Agricultural Management and Informatics (3 papers in press)

Regular Issues

• Methodologies used to assess the impacts of climate change in agricultural economics: a rapid review  
  by Thomas Bournaris, Christina Moulogianni, George Vlontzos, Ioannis Georgilas 
  Abstract: Studies of climate change impacts on agriculture are always used from the policy makers to plan their future policies. The European Union increased the efforts to measure the impact of the policies, but impact assessment has always been a difficult field of study for all research areas. Many methodologies and tools have been applied for assessing the impacts on climate change in agriculture. This paper presents the findings of a literature review on studies in the field of impact assessment of climate change impacts on agricultural economics. A two-stage analysis was conducted. In the first stage, studies are analysed and classified using different criteria. At the second stage of this paper, the methodologies used to assess the impacts of climate change are analysed. The results are provided by a rapid review in the literature from 2010 to 2020. The main findings of the research were that mathematical modelling and scenario analysis were the most common methodologies used as standalone methods or in combination with other methods.
  Keywords: climate change; agricultural economics; rapid review; impact assessment; methodologies.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJSAMI.2021.10041075
   
  
• Fertility level prediction in precision agriculture based on ensemble classifier model  
  by Bhuvaneswari Swaminathan, Saravanan Palani, Subramaniyaswamy Vairavasundaram 
  Abstract: Nowadays, machine learning in precision agriculture have become promising approach for increasing productivity without environmental impact. Despite significant technology advancements, lack of applicability in soil health management leads to lower crop yield. Soil testing is a predominant process to determine the quantity of soil nutrients for crop growth. Thus, the scope of this study investigates the land fertility level based on land chemical properties. An ensemble classifier is incorporated to handle multi-class soil nutrients data. The model's overall objective is to reduce wasteful expenditure on the amount of fertiliser to the land, reduce the intervention of soil science experts, and preserve soil health. The performance of the classification model regularises using grid search tuning mechanism. The experiments were conducted on different data set proportions with various metrics. AUC shows that proposed determine high accuracy of 99.33%. It is clear that proposed approach outperforms over existing state-of-art-techniques in fertility level identification.
  Keywords: soil nutrients information; soil fertility level; correlation coefficient; random forest classification; hyper parameter optimisation; grid search mechanism.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJSAMI.2021.10041286
   
  

Special Issue on: HAICTA2020 New insights on Information and Communication Technologies in Agriculture, Food and Environment

• Commodification vs. patrimonialisation? A community capitals framework for assessing digital technologies. The case of Southern Rural Manitoba, Canada  
  by Sherine Salmon, Mikaël Akimowicz 
  Abstract: Uneven access to broadband has deepened a divide that sees rural residents struggling with digital technologies (DTs). This situation has resulted in the emergence of creative attitudes to take advantage of the potential benefits of DTs. In this article, a continuum of community capitals framed by governance characteristics is proposed to analyse the impact of the utilisation of DTs in rural communities. Focus groups and interviews were carried out with youth, seniors, and businesses in three rural communities of southern Manitoba, Canada. The results show that the interactions between the resources of rural communities are being re-shaped by the progressive adoption and utilisation of DTs. Three conditions to take full advantage of rural digital opportunities are reliable access, affordable access, and digital skills. Nuanced findings that contribute to explaining the ambivalent effects of DTs encourage the pursuit of additional investigations to further refine the proposed continuum of community capitals.
  Keywords: digital technologies; rural broadband; community capitals; Veblen’s (in)tangible assets; Musgrave’s typology of goods; Canadian Prairies.
  DOI: 10.1504/IJSAMI.2021.10040844