Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA): Field Manual

ENGLISH Smallholder farmers are key to food security in sub-Saharan Africa where two thirds of the population depend on small-scale, rain-fed farming as their main source of food and income. Critical farming and household decisions depend upon the weather, for example, how much rain falls, the length and start date of the rainfall season and the timing of dry spells. Such aspects of the weather vary considerably from year to year. The Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) approach aims to facilitate farmers to make informed decisions based on accurate, location specific, climate and weather information; locally relevant crop, livestock and livelihood options; and with the use of participatory tools to aid their decision making. This field manual is a step by step guide to working though the PICSA approach with farmer groups. It is primarily for the use of facilitators (e.g. NGO and extension field staff who have received training in the use of the PICSA approach). The PICSA approach is divided into twelve steps to be carried out with groups of farmers. Due to the location specific nature of PICSA there are a number of preparatory activities that need to be completed before field staff are trained in the approach.ESPAÑOL Los pequeños agricultores son un elemento clave de la seguridad alimentaria en el África subsahariana, donde la agricultura de secano a pequeña escala es la principal fuente de alimento e ingreso de dos tercios de la población. Las decisiones importantes relacionadas con el hogar y la producción agrícola y pecuaria dependen del clima, por ejemplo, cantidad de lluvia, longitud y fecha de inicio de la estación lluviosa y el momento en que se den épocas de sequía. Tales aspectos del clima varían considerablemente de un año a otro. El enfoque de los Servicios Integrados Participativos de Clima para la Agricultura (PICSA, sus siglas en inglés) busca facilitar que los agricultores tomen decisiones fundamentadas, basándose en información climática y meteorológica precisa y específica por sitio; cultivos pertinentes según su ubicación; alternativas de especies pecuarias y actividades de subsistencia; todo mediante el uso de herramientas participativas. Este manual de campo brinda instrucciones paso a paso para trabajar el enfoque PICSA con grupos de agricultores. Está dirigido principalmente a facilitadores (p. ej. ONG y extensionistas que han recibido capacitación sobre el uso del enfoque PICSA). Este enfoque consta de doce pasos que se llevan a cabo con grupos de agricultores. Dada la naturaleza específica por lugar, hay una serie de actividades de preparación que es necesario realizar antes de la capacitación del personal

Training Agricultural Research & Extension Staff to Produce and Communicate Agro-Climatic Information, to Enhance the Resilience and Food Security of Farmers and Pastoralists in Kiteto, Tanzania: Preliminary Findings from the GFCS Adaptation Programme in Africa

National Agricultural Extension Systems in ten districts in Tanzania and Malawi are receiving training in the production and use of climate services as part of a WFP-CCAFS joint activity within the GFCS Adaptation Programme in Africa. This document reports on the first training of intermediaries, conducted for 30 agricultural extension and NGO staff from Kiteto District, Tanzania, 13-17th October 2014 and draws lessons from this to feed forward into preparation and training in the remaining districts in 2015. Preparation for the course included analysis of historical climate information, as well as training of staff from the Tanzania Meteorological Agency in downscaling using the Climate Prediction Tool (CPT). The ensuing training course for intermediaries covered the Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) approach. This aimed to equip agricultural extension field staff to provide local historical climate information, seasonal and sub-seasonal forecasts (seamless forecasts) together with crop and livelihood information and to facilitate use of participatory decision making tools by smallholder farmers, in order to enhance farm and field-level decision making for resilience and food security. Training included a strong practical component. At the end of the training course agricultural extension officers and NGO staff developed plans for implementation in the locations that they work. Formal and informal feedback from participants was very positive. From this first training several improvements to feed into subsequent training in Tanzania and Malawi were identified and recommendations are made. These include: how to ensure that climate information for districts is analysed well in advance; appropriate crop and livestock management options are identified to cover variation within each district; climatic variability is adequately addressed within districts; and the potential benefits of CPT downscaled forecasting are fully explored

The management and outcome of hyponatraemia following transsphenoidal surgery: a retrospective observational study

PURPOSE: Hyponatraemia is a common complication following transsphenoidal surgery. However, there is sparse data on its optimal management and impact on clinical outcomes. The aim of this study was to evaluate the management and outcome of hyponatraemia following transsphenoidal surgery. METHODS: A prospectively maintained database was searched over a 4-year period between January 2016 and December 2019, to identify all patients undergoing transsphenoidal surgery. A retrospective case-note review was performed to extract data on hyponatraemia management and outcome. RESULTS: Hyponatraemia occurred in 162 patients (162/670; 24.2%) with a median age of 56 years. Female gender and younger age were associated with hyponatraemia, with mean nadir sodium being 128.6 mmol/L on postoperative day 7. Hyponatraemic patients had longer hospital stay than normonatraemic group with nadir sodium being inversely associated with length of stay (p < 0.001). In patients with serum sodium ≤ 132 mmol/L, syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion (SIADH) was the commonest cause (80/111; 72%). Among 76 patients treated with fluid restriction as a monotherapy, 25 patients (25/76; 32.9%) did not achieve a rise in sodium after 3 days of treatment. Readmission with hyponatraemia occurred in 11 cases (11/162; 6.8%) at a median interval of 9 days after operation. CONCLUSIONS: Hyponatraemia is a relatively common occurrence following transsphenoidal surgery, is associated with longer hospital stay and risk of readmission and the effectiveness of fluid restriction is limited. These findings highlight the need for further studies to better identify and treat high-risk patients, including the use of arginine vasopressin receptor antagonists

Gender differences in use and preferences of agricultural information sources in Pakistan

Purpose: Rural advisory services ensure agricultural information is disseminated to rural populations, yet they are less accessible to women. This research provides insight on gender differences in information access by investigating frequency of use and preference of agricultural information sources by gender in a rural setting, differentiated according to literacy and age. Design/Methodology/approach: This study interviewed 401 male/female individuals in farm households in Jhang and Bahawalpur district of Punjab, Pakistan in 2016. Findings: Men and women farmers’ use and preferences in accessing information sources are extremely different. Women hardly use sources for agricultural information, and value interpersonal communication from informal sources. In contrast, men use and value official agencies more. Radio, surprisingly, was very rarely used, contradicting previous findings of research elsewhere. Age and literacy affect differences between women more than it does between men, particularly for convenient locations to access information. Practical implications The study identified and refined major gender differences regarding use and preference for agricultural information in relation to age and literacy, and helps to articulate options to improve gender equality of access to agricultural information in Pakistan. Theoretical implications: The focus and outcomes regarding gender intersecting with age and literacy in agricultural information access imply the need for more refined socioeconomic models, discerning and interrelating gender and other social dimensions beyond the standard of male-headed households. Originality/value: This paper adds to the growing body of evidence on information access according to gender, highlighting the need to investigate deeper socio-cultural issues around age and literacy

Identifying gender-responsive approaches in rural advisory services that contribute to the institutionalisation of gender in Pakistan

Purpose: Unequal reach and access to information is an issue that affects women involved in agricultural activities around the world. Recent initiatives to address gender unequal access to agricultural information have been clumsy, overlooking participatory approaches that focus on transformative change. This study uses Pakistani rural advisory services to compare farmers' and extension workers’ perceptions of access to agricultural information, to identify culturally acceptable gender-responsive schemes. Design/methodology/approach: One-hundred and eleven extension workers in Pakistan’s public rural advisory services were interviewed and crosstabulated with farmers’ answers in previous studies. Findings: Male extension workers are aware that women access less information less often; however they might not be aware of its importance in the gender inequality debate. Lead farmers could offer a potentially transformative knowledge pathway because of its blend of formal and informal interactions – both systems favoured by female smallholders. An exclusively female-led lead farmer approach could be developed and trialled in specific areas of the province. Practical implications: Targeted initiatives focusing on improving awareness and importance of gender inequalities in information access as well as specific extension system development centred on lead female farmers and extension agents are important in institutionalising gender and creating transformative change. Theoretical implications: Linking these activities to in-depth social network and agricultural innovation system analyses would provide further evidence of the importance of focused gender activities and their impact on food security. Originality/value: This paper highlights the importance of analysing individual perceptions to understand the types of initiatives that could be considered for a wider institutionalisation of gender in RAS

Mobile applications for weather and climate information: their use and potential for smallholder farmers

Mobile phones are increasingly being used to provide smallholder farmers with agricultural and related information. There is currently great interest in their scope to communicate climate and weather information. Farmers consistently identify demand for weather information and whilst ICTs may be one way of delivering this at scale there are concerns that this should not be seen as a panacea. At a time when there have been a range of initiatives and projects that have been implemented this paper seeks to draw lessons and identify key considerations to inform the development of future mobile applications to provide climate services to smallholder farmers. A literature review, interviews with key informants and experts and 15 case study reviews were conducted. This focused principally on Sub Saharan Africa but included some examples from India. Despite numerous initiatives few have developed fully beyond the pilot stage and few have been evaluated. Some of the provision to date has been of questionable value to farmers. A key observation is that relatively little attention has been paid in design, to the needs for and use of both the information and technology by farmers, and few attempts made to differentiate provision according to gender and other demographic variables. Other factors contributing to success included communications approaches, which are interactive and/or involve trusted intermediaries who can add context to and help interpret more complex information. Providing weather information alongside other services as ‘bundles’ and in conjunction with complementary communications approaches appears to work well. An important challenge is how to meet farmers’ needs for location specific, timely and relevant information in economically sustainable ways. More widely there are challenges in achieving successful business models and potential conflicts between initiatives driven by mobile network operators and public goals. The study identified areas of considerable potential which include: the use of increasingly available mobile data connections to ensure locally relevant content is available to farmers in timely fashion (including both historical climate information and forecasts); development of participatory decision making tools to enable farmers to interpret information for their own contexts and consider implications and management options; use of visual applications and participatory video on mobile devices to enhance learning and advisory services for farmers; the potential for increased feedback between farmers and service providers as well as increased knowledge sharing between farmers provided by the use of social media

A spherical joint robotic end-effector for the Expanded Endoscopic Endonasal Approach

The endonasal transsphenoidal approach allows surgeons to access the pituitary gland through the natural orifice of the nose. Recently, surgeons have also described an Expanded Endoscopic Endonasal Approach (EEEA) for the treatment of other tumours around the base of the brain. However, operating in this way with nonarticulated tools is technically very difficult and not widely adopted. The goal of this study is to develop an articulated end-effector for a novel handheld robotic tool for the EEEA. We present a design and implementation of a 3.6mm diameter, three degrees-of-freedom, tendon-driven robotic end-effector that, contrary to rigid instruments which operate under fulcrum, will give the surgeon the ability to reach areas on the surface of the brain that were previously inaccessible. We model the end-effector kinematics in simulation to study the theoretical workspace it can achieve prior to implementing a test-bench device to validate the efficacy of the end-effector. We find promising repeatability of the proposed robotic end-effector of 0.42mm with an effective workspace with limits of ±30∘, which is greater than conventional neurosurgical tools. Additionally, although the tool’s end-effector has a small enough diameter to operate through the narrow nasal access path and the constrained workspace of EEEA, it showcased promising structural integrity and was able to support approximately a 6N load, despite a large deflection angle the limiting of which is scope of future work. These preliminary results indicate the end-effector is a promising first step towards developing appropriate handheld robotic instrumentation to drive EEEA adoption

Historical and future trends in emergency pituitary referrals: a machine learning analysis

Purpose: Acute pituitary referrals to neurosurgical services frequently necessitate emergency care. Yet, a detailed characterisation of pituitary emergency referral patterns, including how they may change prospectively is lacking. This study aims to evaluate historical and current pituitary referral patterns and utilise state-of-the-art machine learning tools to predict future service use. Methods: A data-driven analysis was performed using all available electronic neurosurgical referrals (2014–2021) to the busiest U.K. pituitary centre. Pituitary referrals were characterised and volumes were predicted using an auto-regressive moving average model with a preceding seasonal and trend decomposition using Loess step (STL-ARIMA), compared against a Convolutional Neural Network-Long Short-Term Memory (CNN-LSTM) algorithm, Prophet and two standard baseline forecasting models. Median absolute, and median percentage error scoring metrics with cross-validation were employed to evaluate algorithm performance. Results: 462 of 36,224 emergency referrals were included (referring centres = 48; mean patient age = 56.7 years, female:male = 0.49:0.51). Emergency medicine and endocrinology accounted for the majority of referrals (67%). The most common presentations were headache (47%) and visual field deficits (32%). Lesions mainly comprised tumours or haemorrhage (85%) and involved the pituitary gland or fossa (70%). The STL-ARIMA pipeline outperformed CNN-LSTM, Prophet and baseline algorithms across scoring metrics, with standard accuracy being achieved for yearly predictions. Referral volumes significantly increased from the start of data collection with future projected increases (p < 0.001) and did not significantly reduce during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusion: This work is the first to employ large-scale data and machine learning to describe and predict acute pituitary referral volumes, estimate future service demands, explore the impact of system stressors (e.g. COVID pandemic), and highlight areas for service improvement

FARMER PERCEPTIONS ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND VARIABILITY IN SEMI-ARID ZIMBABWE IN RELATION TO CLIMATOLOGY EVIDENCE

Farmers in semi-arid Zimbabwe prioritise climate variability as their major agricultural productivity-reducing problem. This paper raises the importance of considering local farmers\u2019 perceptions on climate risk, as this greatly influences on-farm investments and decision-making in agricultural management and production in semiarid Zimbabwe. A study was conducted in two districts of semi-arid Zimbabwe using participatory research techniques, to investigate farmers\u2019 perceptions of climate variability and whether these perceptions correspond with historical climatic data. The study showed that farmers perceived climatic and weather patterns to have changed over the past decade or two, as indicated by erratic rainfall patterns, decreased rainfall and temperature increases, leading to crop productivity decline and increased livestock morbidity and mortality. Majority of respondents (75%; n=81) were highly risk-averse, perceiving that most of the seasons in any ten given years could be poor. The climatic data show no evidence that corroborates the farmers\u2019 perceptions, with only temperature showing a clear signal, indicating the influence of other non-climatic factors. The climate data show rainfall variability to be a normal characteristic of the study sites, with deviations from the climatic rainfall means (or the poor seasons) being cyclical and occurring once in every three seasons over the past 40 years. The study highlights strategies that farmers could implement to enhance agricultural productivity in the semi-arid areas to adapt to climate change and variability.Les fermiers des r\ue9gions semi-arides du Zimbabwe mettent en priorit\ue9 variabilit\ue9 climatique comme facteur majeur de la r\ue9duction de la productivit\ue9 agricole. Cet article \ue9voque l\u2019importance des perceptions paysannes eu \ue9gard au risque climatique \ue9tant donn\ue9 son influence sur les investissements agricoles et la prise des d\ue9cisions dans la gestion agricole et la production dans les milieux semi aride du Zimbabwe. Une recherche \ue9tait conduite dans deux districts semi arides du Zimbabwe afin de faire \ue9tat de perceptions paysannes sur la variabilit\ue9 climatique et ses liens avec les donn\ue9es climatiques historiques. Une technique de recherche participative \ue9tait utilis\ue9e pour cette fin. Les r\ue9sultats de cette \ue9tude ont montr\ue9 que les paysans per\ue7oivent que les scenarios climatiques ont chang\ue9 au cours d\u2019une ou deux derni\ue8res d\ue9cennies comme cela s\u2019est manifest\ue9 \ue0 travers les pluies erratiques, la diminution des pluies et \ue9l\ue9vation de la temp\ue9rature avec pour cons\ue9quences la diminution de la productivit\ue9 des cultures l\u2019augmentation de la morbidit\ue9 et la mortalit\ue9 du b\ue9tail. La majorit\ue9 des r\ue9pondants (75% ; n=81) \ue9tait sous risque, percevant que la plupart des saisons pourrait \ueatre pauvre dans dix ans. Les donn\ue9es climatiques ne montrent aucune \ue9vidence qui confirme les perceptions paysannes, avec seule la temp\ue9rature ayant un signal claire indiquant l\u2019influence d\u2019autres facteurs non climatiques. Les donn\ue9es climatiques montrent que la variabilit\ue9 pluviom\ue9trique dans les sites d\u2019\ue9tude pr\ue9sente une caract\ue9ristique normale, avec des d\ue9viations cycliques des moyennes des pr\ue9cipitations (les saisons pauvres) apparaissant une fois toutes les trois saisons au cours de 40 ans. L\u2019\ue9tude met en \ue9vidence les strat\ue9gies auxquelles les paysans pourraient recourir pour am\ue9liorer la productivit\ue9 des cultures en milieux semi arides pour l\u2019adaptation au changement climatique et sa variabilit\ue9

Farmer perceptions on climate change and variability in semi-arid Zimbabwe in relation to climatology evidence

Farmers in semi-arid Zimbabwe prioritise climate variability as their major agricultural productivity-reducing problem. This paper raises the importance of considering local farmers’ perceptions on climate risk, as this greatly influences on-farm investments and decision-making in agricultural management and production in semiarid Zimbabwe. A study was conducted in two districts of semi-arid Zimbabwe using participatory research techniques, to investigate farmers’ perceptions of climate variability and whether these perceptions correspond with historical climatic data. The study showed that farmers perceived climatic and weather patterns to have changed over the past decade or two, as indicated by erratic rainfall patterns, decreased rainfall and temperature increases, leading to crop productivity decline and increased livestock morbidity and mortality. Majority of respondents (75%; n=81) were highly risk-averse, perceiving that most of the seasons in any ten given years could be poor. The climatic data show no evidence that corroborates the farmers’ perceptions, with only temperature showing a clear signal, indicating the influence of other non-climatic factors. The climate data show rainfall variability to be a normal characteristic of the study sites, with deviations from the climatic rainfall means (or the poor seasons) being cyclical and occurring once in every three seasons over the past 40 years. The study highlights strategies that farmers could implement to enhance agricultural productivity in the semi-arid areas to adapt to climate change and variability