Prospects for the world jute industry
Prospects for the world jute industry to the mid-1990s are analyzed to identify trends likely to follow the confusion in the jute market originating from the 1984/85 fiber supply crisis. These prospects are derived from analysis of information obtained from surveys of jute demand in several countries and from simulation results from a recently built econometric model of the world jute economy. Jute fiber is used primarily as a textile raw material for making packaging products, carpets, industrial fabrics and twine. Its main demand base is derived from the need to package agricultural inputs and produce in countries where storage and distribution to wholesale and retail markets is in packaged form. Structural changes occurring in the world demand for jute are identified. Prospects for the expansion of jute consumption for packaging uses in developing countries are fairly bright since the scope for early changes to bulk-handling and synthetic substitution are limited. The rapid loss of markets for jute sacks and bags to bulk handling in the industrial countries and grain-exporting developing countries during the 1970s has about run its course. So have the losses of fabric markets where synthetic products held distinct advantages in technical performance or cost. The resulting structural shifts in the regional distribution of consumption and changes in the product composition of final demand suggest that the growth in world demand for jute to the mid-1990s should be somewhat higher than was attained during the 1970s and early 1980s. The sharp output decline in India and Bangladesh in 1984 appears to have started another price/supply cycle. On past performance it is likely that the high prices of 1984/85 will lead to large output increases in the 1985/86 and 1986/87 harvests causing prices to fall and leading to a period of low prices and low output in the late 1980s.
Seasonal Floodplain‐Upland Migration Along the Lower Amazon River*
A current pattern of seasonal migration, particularly among smallholders, is marked by movement between the Amazon River floodplain and upland bluffs near the city of Santarém, Brazil. Nearly fifty years of jute cultivation “subsidized” residents of the floodplain, enabling them to remain there year‐round. Without this subsidy, annual flooding and the concomitant seasonal dearth of cash‐economy activities make permanent occupancy difficult. The present‐day seasonal migration and complementary use of both upland and floodplain environments has broad implications for theories about past patterns of settlement and for the region's future sustainable development.
Experimental observation of a strange nonchaotic attractor.
Evidence is presented for the existence of a strange nonchaotic attractor in a two-frequency quasi-periodically driven, buckled, magnetoelastic ribbon experiment. Scaling behavior in the Fourier amplitude spectrum is observed in agreement with predicted scaling behavior for strange nonchaotic attractors. Dimension measurements also support the existence of a strange nonchaotic attractor