The point of view of farmer .

Conversation with: Tanino Campisi, 31-12-2009

Key words: water, aquifer, production quality, commercial activities

Several aspects of water management and agricultural production have been discussed during a conversation with Mr. Tanino Campisi on the 31^st December 2009.

What follows are just opinions, bust substantiated by 2 generations long experience on the agricultural sector on a industrial scale.

Siracusa is provided with favourable conditions, the land is perceived to be generous, it offers optimal conditions for lemon production, Lentini and Palagonia are optimal for oranges, the southern zones of Avola is optimal for almonds. The area of Vittoria is less favourable for agriculture because of sandy soils and sea breeze but they are using green-houses.

The area of Siracusa is perceived to be reach of water; 200 l/s of production from local wells are common. No water scarcity has been ever recorded there. Consortiums of irrigation are not in place, therefore only private wells are operational nevertheless, wells, not officially registered are common too. When registered, wells are registered at the Genio Civile that should check the meters. Water quality decreases going from the mountain plain to the seashore, (parameter are needed). Sea water intrusion is happening in the costal plane.

Farmers in these areas are small and medium size and are not organized in consortiums.

The commercial side, the entire production cycle depends on the farmer, research is not done, and universities are far away. How farmers develop innovation? Innovation would be very much welcome, Tanino says, and it is needed but none of that is done in-house. Relations with universities and research institutions are not common and although needed.

Bottom line innovation is difficult to be implemented because a certain scepticism. Basically researchers and consultants are not trusted and farmers of long traditions believe of having a better understanding of local conditions. In reality the easy environmental conditions, which are in place in the province, create a sense of overconfidence in the farmers and there is no tradition or reliance on external consultancy because actually external competences were never needed. Farmers easily succeeded in the production with such a fertile soil.

Well, on the other hands countries with more difficult conditions have been accustomed, have been forced by circumstances, to closer contacts with technicians and researchers, so that it became an habit and nowadays farmers are more open to scientific cooperation.

Given that, in Siracusa, water and natural resources are not limiting factors of production (that’s disputable) the real problems are related to: cost of working power, costs of fertilizers and weak position of farmers in front of big distribution.

In few words:

Water is not a limiting factor of production (is it true?);

Water quality is excellent if extracted far from the costal area;

The agricultural conditions are particularly favourable because of fertile soil and mild weather;

Favourable conditions generate certain overconfidence in the farmers that never needed external consultancy (they never asked and actually they don’t know who to ask to);

Universities and farmers do not know each other and do not cooperate;

The agricultural association is not active and does not promote innovation in this area;

Now, it is believed that in regions with much more difficult conditions, agriculture is based on scientific studies and proper calibrations, therefore, relations with technician and researcher are part of the tradition.

That’s it, a point of view of an industrial farmer in the geographic area of Siracua.

On the ancient Venecian Hydrography

Extracted from: Antonio Averone, Ing. Capo del Genio Civile, Magistrato per le acque delle province Venete e di Mantova (1911) Sull’antica Idrogrfia veneta.

There were huge floods and damages in Veneto On May 1905. On the same year On. Fortis, the President of the Italian Cabinet, called for the creation of a unifying authority in charge for the water management of the area. Whit a specific legislation on the 5^th of May 1907, he created the Magistrato delle Acque, literary “the minister of waters” for Veneto and Mantova. This institution was a new edition of a very old and respected office of the ancient Vencian Republic.

Ing. Averone was appointed the first Magistrato of the modern time. He started with the collection of all possible information, maps, documents and material about the Lagoon and its surrounding rivers. These were located in several archives and they documented the continual evolution of the ever changing lagoon.

From the ages of Roman Empire until now a light motive can be found: on one hand the constant efforts to save the lagoon from being covered by rivers sediments and on the other hand the necessity to protect surrounding lands from river and/or sea flooding. Moreover, other complementary objectives are clearly stated by the lows of all time, for instance: keeping the various rivers suitable for navigation.

The natural environment of the lagoon and Venice is particularly instable and ever changing. It is a very large sedimentary area with the tendency to sink under sea level because of natural rearrangement of the soil. Rivers coming from the alps can bring devastating floods, and the natural high tide low tide cycle can submerge vast are areas including large portion of Venice. Here, an ever lasting fight is in place between man and waters.

Averone started looking back into the past and reconstruct the evolution, let say the genealogy of the current hydro-geological and topographical setting. Useful sources were found in Plinio and Strabone in his Geografia, Marco Cornaro (1440) and Professor Schiapparelli in the 19^th century.

The streets of ancient Roman construction can bring useful information, for that reason they were searched all along the centuries and many are still visible today. The general assumption is that Romans would not build on wetlands so that those street can mark a first geographical border. The places where cities and military rocks were built can give to the modern researcher an idea of the dimension of the lagoon in the ancient time.

More recent documents, from the time of the Serenissima, testify the great effort that have been done across centuries to divert rivers outside the lagoon. This was done to avoid submerging the free waters with sediment and therefore transforming a navigable sea in wetlands.

Many have been the theories and conjectures about a large amount of natural phenomena observed in this ever changing environment: the sea level oscillations, the origin and nature of the fresh waters in the middle of the sea, the natural shifting of the river path, and so on.

Professor Schiapparelli, in the 18^th century solved on of the greatest mysteries. He proved that a measured rising of the water of about 10cm per hundred years can be attributed to the movement of the earth axis. In fact, even a small movement of the hearth axis northward will carry a consequent movement of the equatorial belt northward, and given that the heart is spherical a greater centrifugal force is applied at the lowest latitude where the heart radius is the larger, the sea water will tend to accumulate and rise. That’s why the water are rising of about 10cm verey 100 years.

Please notice that this is was a valid theory in the 1911 the year in which Avarrone is writing.

Something else can be extracted from this document, the ancient organization of the Magistrato delle acque. Meaning, how ancient people used to organize administrative function of the waters of the lagoon and how do they perceived and allocated the tasks and problems. Much more can be said about that, here I just mention that the Magistrato was supported by 3 consiglieri: one for the rivers; one for the arbores; and one for the costal lines.

That’s all for now, to be continued.

Lagrange Multiplier Problems in Economics

Lagrange Multiplier Problems in Economics


Several surprises are in store for the mathematics student who looks
for the first time at nontrivial constrained optimization problems in economics. The
usual constrained problem in a mathematics course has only one or two critical points
and the selection of the absolute maximum is clear from the geometric nature of the
problem. Mathematics texts often ignore sufficient conditions (involving bordered
Hessian determinants) for relative extrema and provide no interpretation of the Lagrange
multiplier leaving the student with the impression that has no significance beyond
providing an extra variable which magically transforms the constrained problem into an
unconstrained higher dimensional problem.

Venezia

Is that a Problem? We need solutions

Solution comes with actions;
actions implies choices and decisions;

decisions need a rationale;
(anyway Gideon says: act immediately)

The first element of a Decision Problem are:
WHO, HOW, WHAT

Who takes decision
Who is involved in the decision process
Who is impacted by the decision

How decision are taken? (which criteria I’ll use)

What is the objective?

Sometime the objective and the method are clear (puzzle problem);
Sometime the objective is clear but the method is not (the problem);
Sometimes nothing is clear (meaning you look for trebles).

Depending on the situation we can have optimal solution (substantial rationality)
or just a satisfactory solution (Procedural rationality).

Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916– February 9, 2001) is the father of decision making theory. Baruk abba chaver! He says: i.e. it is impossible to have perfect and complete information at any given time to make a decision.
In decision-making, Simon believed that agents face uncertainty about the future and costs in acquiring information in the present. These factors limit the extent to which agents can make a fully rational decision, thus they possess only “bounded rationality” and must make decisions by “satisficing,” or choosing that which might not be optimal but which will make them happy enough

The task of rational decision making is to select the alternative that results in the more preferred set of all the possible consequences of actions. This task can be divided into three required steps: (1) the identification and listing of all the alternatives; (2) the determination of all the consequences resulting from each of the alternatives; and (3) the comparison of the accuracy and efficiency of each of these sets of consequences.
(decision, action, consequences).

The correctness of decisions is measured by two major criteria: (1) adequacy of achieving the desired objective; and (2) the efficiency with which the result was obtained. Many members of the organization may focus on adequacy, but the overall administrative management must pay particular attention to the efficiency with which the desired result was obtained.

Ok, that’s all about Simon

There are another couple of things to mention:

Getting information: be satisfied with the minimum, in this case! and think about Pareto.
Participatory approach: it helps to get better info about the problem and the possible solution
It makes the solution more acceptable by stakeholders.
There are risks

Decisions must be: Transparent; Explicit, Clear.

Modelling what?

Impact of climate change

Impact of adaptation strategies

Does not matter whether climate change is anthropogenic or not… it is a fact anyway. There are three ways to walk now: we adapt; we mitigate it; we ignore it.. (I’ll do them all together ;)

Business as usual does not require new thinking, but adaptation and mitigation strategies do and we may need modelling for that.What does a model do: it is a simplification of the system, it tells me how all the element of system moves together.

When there resources we are dealing with are scarce, that’s an economic model.

When there is a cost benefit analysis that’s an economic model.

When there are infinite resources to be allocate that’s not an economic model.

An ideal policy would combine both adaptation and mitigation.

Modelling stages:

10) measuring impact of CC on welfare;

20) measuring costs&benefits of different adaptation&mitigation strategies;

Strategies? How would you judge them?

10) effectiveness: ability to reach the goal (yes/no; %)

20) efficiency: ability to reach the goal at a minimal cost ($)

30) equity: related to resource allocation;

The chain of events in a CC model:

10) climate system dynamics or scenarios will impact on (20)

20) environmental dynamics will impact on (30)

30) social and economic dynamics will impact on (10)

apparently we always look at the changes in the system… the delta in the agricultural costs, delta in soil productivity, delta in water availability etc etc… mind the delta! Sure..

Rotmans and Dowlatabady 1995

Models have plenty of gaps, here they are in two macro groups:

10) incompleteness: we don’t know data or don’t understand relations (who doesn’t anyway?)

20) Probability: we are not certain of data and relation and there is a probability distribution attached to a certain event or estimation. Discount choice

We know a lot about costs of adaptation and mitigation we don’t know enough about their benefit. Benefits are probable, cost are certain….

Moreover many investments and many natural phenomena are not reversible, for example a dike cannot be dismantled and reused somewhere else (yet); a species extinction is even a more sad story.

Welfare measurement and redistribution always imply ethical judgement, and also decision about..

- Inter-generations distribution (temporal distribution)

- Infra-generations distribution (spatial distribution)

Moreover, it is possible to rank welfare level in a cardinal order but it is not possible to measure how much a person or a group is better well off the another.

The following are three possible objective functions, were:

W is welfare, a is a weight, α is the interest rate..