Factors Influencing Smallholder Farmers Participation in IFAD-Community Based Agricultural and Rural Development Project in Katsina State

This study assessed smallholder farmers’ participation in IFAD-Community Based Agricultural and Rural Development Project in Katsina State. Data for the study were obtained by the use of structured questionnaire. Multistage sampling technique was employed to select the 698 respondents. In the first stage, a purposive sampling technique was used to select one village area that had the highest participating farmers out of the three village areas in each LGA. The second stage involved the use of systematic random sampling technique to select 12% of the population. This gave a total of three hundred and fourty nine (349) participating farmers from the twelve participating village areas. Also, 349 non-participating farmers were selected from neighbouring communities using systematic random sampling. Descriptive statistics and logit regression analysis were used to analyze the data. The result shows that 23% of the participating farmers were between the ages of 46-50 years and 91% were males. The result also shows that level of education with coefficient value of (-0.309), household size (-0.041), farm size (0.801), membership of cooperative (0.547) and extension contact (-0.283) were the factors influencingsmallholder farmers participation in the project. The result further shows that inadequate capital, inadequate agricultural credits and inadequate storage facilities were the major constraints to participation in the programme. The study recommends that extension workers should assist farmers to form viable co-operatives associations and where they are in existence, efforts should be made to strengthen them for easy access to credit, farm inputs and markets for their agricultural products

Factors Influencing Smallholder Farmers Participation in IFAD-Community Based Agricultural and Rural Development Project in Katsina State

This study assessed smallholder farmers’ participation in IFAD-Community Based Agricultural and Rural Development Project in Katsina State. Data for the study were obtained by the use of structured questionnaire. Multistage sampling technique was employed to select the 698 respondents. In the first stage, a purposive sampling technique was used to select one village area that had the highest participating farmers out of the three village areas in each LGA. The second stage involved the use of systematic random sampling technique to select 12% of the population. This gave a total of three hundred and fourty nine (349) participating farmers from the twelve participating village areas. Also, 349 non-participating farmers were selected from neighbouring communities using systematic random sampling. Descriptive statistics and logit regression analysis were used to analyze the data. The result shows that 23% of the participating farmers were between the ages of 46-50 years and 91% were males. The result also shows that level of education with coefficient value of (-0.309), household size (-0.041), farm size (0.801), membership of cooperative (0.547) and extension contact (-0.283) were the factors influencingsmallholder farmers participation in the project. The result further shows that inadequate capital, inadequate agricultural credits and inadequate storage facilities were the major constraints to participation in the programme. The study recommends that extension workers should assist farmers to form viable co-operatives associations and where they are in existence, efforts should be made to strengthen them for easy access to credit, farm inputs and markets for their agricultural products

Cliophysics: Socio-political Reliability Theory, Polity Duration and African Political (In)stabilities

Quantification of historical sociological processes have recently gained attention among theoreticians in the effort of providing a solid theoretical understanding of the behaviors and regularities present in sociopolitical dynamics. Here we present a reliability theory of polity processes with emphases on individual political dynamics of African countries. We found that the structural properties of polity failure rates successfully capture the risk of political vulnerability and instabilities in which 87.50%, 75%, 71.43%, and 0% of the countries with monotonically increasing, unimodal, U-shaped and monotonically decreasing polity failure rates, respectively, have high level of state fragility indices. The quasi-U-shape relationship between average polity duration and regime types corroborates historical precedents and explains the stability of the autocracies and democracies.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Mapping recent information behavior research: an analysis of co-authorship and cocitation networks

There has been an increase in research published on information behavior in recent years, and this has been accompanied by an increase in its diversity and interaction with other fields, particularly information retrieval (HR). The aims of this study are to determine which researchers have contributed to producing the current body of knowledge on this subject, and to describe its intellectual basis. A bibliometric and network analysis was applied to authorship and co-authorship as well as citation and co-citation. According to these analyses, there is a small number of authors who can be considered to be the most productive and who publish regularly, and a large number of transient ones. Other findings reveal a marked predominance of theoretical works, some examples of qualitative methodology that originate in other areas of social science, and a high incidence of research focused on the user interaction with information retrieval systems and the information behavior of doctors

Recent genetic connectivity and clinal variation in chimpanzees.

Funder: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Max Planck Society); doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100004189Funder: Max Planck Society Innovation Fund Heinz L. Krekeler FoundationMuch like humans, chimpanzees occupy diverse habitats and exhibit extensive behavioural variability. However, chimpanzees are recognized as a discontinuous species, with four subspecies separated by historical geographic barriers. Nevertheless, their range-wide degree of genetic connectivity remains poorly resolved, mainly due to sampling limitations. By analyzing a geographically comprehensive sample set amplified at microsatellite markers that inform recent population history, we found that isolation by distance explains most of the range-wide genetic structure of chimpanzees. Furthermore, we did not identify spatial discontinuities corresponding with the recognized subspecies, suggesting that some of the subspecies-delineating geographic barriers were recently permeable to gene flow. Substantial range-wide genetic connectivity is consistent with the hypothesis that behavioural flexibility is a salient driver of chimpanzee responses to changing environmental conditions. Finally, our observation of strong local differentiation associated with recent anthropogenic pressures portends future loss of critical genetic diversity if habitat fragmentation and population isolation continue unabated

Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas

The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon¹⁻³. With deforestation advancing quickly, protected areas are increasingly becoming final refuges for threatened species and natural ecosystem processes. However, many protected areas in the tropics are themselves vulnerable to human encroachment and other environmental stresses⁴⁻⁹. As pressures mount, it is vital to know whether existing reserves can sustain their biodiversity. A critical constraint in addressing this question has been that data describing a broad array of biodiversity groups have been unavailable for a sufficiently large and representative sample of reserves. Here we present a uniquely comprehensive data set on changes over the past 20 to 30 years in 31 functional groups of species and 21 potential drivers of environmental change, for 60 protected areas stratified across the world’s major tropical regions. Our analysis reveals great variation in reserve ‘health’: about half of all reserves have been effective or performed passably, but the rest are experiencing an erosion of biodiversity that is often alarmingly widespread taxonomically and functionally. Habitat disruption, hunting and forest-product exploitation were the strongest predictors of declining reserve health. Crucially, environmental changes immediately outside reserves seemed nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate, with changes inside reserves strongly mirroring those occurring around them. These findings suggest that tropical protected areas are often intimately linked ecologically to their surrounding habitats, and that a failure to stem broad-scale loss and degradation of such habitats could sharply increase the likelihood of serious biodiversity declines.Keywords: Ecology, Environmental scienc

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

Adoption Level of IFAD Project Recommended Farming Practices among Smallholder Crop Farmers in Katsina State, Nigeria

This study assessed the adoption level of IFAD-CBARDP recommended farming practices among smallholder crop farmers in Katsina State. Data for the study were obtained by the use of structured questionnaire. Multistage sampling procedure was employed to select 349 respondents. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. The result shows that the mean age of the participating farmers was 46years, 91% were males, 87.2%, 83% and 82.73% of the respondents respectively adopted the use of recommended fertilizer, method and dosage of fertilizer application and the use of seed dressing chemicals. The result further shows that 16.9%, 15.2% and 14.6% of the respondents respectively identified low counterpart funding, untimely disbursement of funds and inadequate mobility of extension staff as the major constraints to the effective implementation of the programme. Generally, there was a high level of adoption of the recommended farming practices among the participating farmers in the study area. It is recommended that funding of the project should be centrally coordinated, with contributions made by all the three tiers of government.Â

Adoption Level of IFAD Project Recommended Farming Practices among Smallholder Crop Farmers in Katsina State, Nigeria

This study assessed the adoption level of IFAD-CBARDP recommended farming practices among smallholder crop farmers in Katsina State. Data for the study were obtained by the use of structured questionnaire. Multistage sampling procedure was employed to select 349 respondents. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. The result revealed that the mean age of the participating farmers was 46years, 91% were males, and a mean farm size of 3.21 hectares. The study also revealed that 87.2%, 83% and 82.73% of the respondents respectively adopted the use of recommended fertilizer, method and dosage of fertilizer application and the use of seed dressing chemicals. The result further showed that 16.9%, 15.2% and 14.6% of the respondents respectively identified low counterpart funding, untimely disbursement of funds and inadequate mobility of extension staff as the major constraints to the effective implementation of the programme. Generally, there was a high level of adoption of the recommended farming practices among the participating farmers in the study area. The study recommends that the funding of the project should be centrally coordinated, with contributions made by all the three tiers of government.Keywords: Adoption level, IFAD-CBARDP, Smallholder Farmers

Adoption Level of IFAD Project Recommended Farming Practices among Smallholder Crop Farmers in Katsina State, Nigeria

This study assessed the adoption level of IFAD-CBARDP recommended farming practices among smallholder crop farmers in Katsina State. Data for the study were obtained by the use of structured questionnaire. Multistage sampling procedure was employed to select 349 respondents. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. The result shows that the mean age of the participating farmers was 46years, 91% were males, 87.2%, 83% and 82.73% of the respondents respectively adopted the use of recommended fertilizer, method and dosage of fertilizer application and the use of seed dressing chemicals. The result further shows that 16.9%, 15.2% and 14.6% of the respondents respectively identified low counterpart funding, untimely disbursement of funds and inadequate mobility of extension staff as the major constraints to the effective implementation of the programme. Generally, there was a high level of adoption of the recommended farming practices among the participating farmers in the study area. It is recommended that funding of the project should be centrally coordinated, with contributions made by all the three tiers of government.Â