Determinants of Wellbeing Among Smallholders in Adjumani District, Uganda

An ordered logistic regression model was used to empirically establish the quantitative effects of community identified (local) determinants of wellbeing on the level of household wellbeing. The model was fitted to data for a sample of 200 households collected in the last quarter of 2002. The dependent variable, poverty category, has three levels namely poorest =1, Less poor =2, and Better off =3. Fourteen independent variables are used. Results show that households that own less than 5 acreage of land, that are male headed, have a nonagricultural source of income and are actively involved in agricultural development activities have a higher probability (odds) of enjoying wellbeing above any given level. Land ownership seems to be the most important determinant of wellbeing in Adjumani district. Furthermore, owning livestock and having a household head with an education level of secondary school and above are also important determinants of household wellbeing in Adjumani district. We find household wellbeing to be negatively affected by household size, age of the household head and whether any family member has had any long illness although only the age of the household is significant. We recommend deepening of the Universal Primary Education (UPE) and initiation of Universal Secondary Education to increase the education levels of the rural people. We also recommend continued and expansion of community level agricultural development activities, strengthening of the land tenure provisions to enhance access to land and initiation of programs to enhance animal ownership among small holder farmers in Adjumani.Adjumani, poverty analysis, DASS, ordinal logit, Consumer/Household Economics,

Current marketing, supply and demand of agricultural seeds in Zimbabwe

Future agricultural growth in the communal areas of Zimbabwe must come from intensified land use. This cannot be achieved on any large scale until the needs of small-scale farmers are met with respect to agricultural technique and supporting services. Improved seeds are one of the most important techniques in this regard. The genetic quality of seed determines the potential yield and thus the productivity of complementary agricultural inputs and crop husbandry practices. Moreover, and this is of special importance for resource-poor farmers in communal areas, improved seeds can, if appropriate, make a substantial contribution to productivity independent of other inputs. In an African context, Zimbabwe has a reputation for a very high standard of agricultural research and for a highly efficient private seed industry - the largest of its kind in Africa. This working paper examines the equity function of seed supply in Zimbabwe, and analyses the extent to which improved seeds are delivered of the types and quantities required by communal farmers in a timely manner to appropriate locations, and at affordable prices. Standard textbooks on rural development in Africa pay little attention to agricultural seed in their discussion of input supply systems. Written material on agricultural research and seed production in Zimbabwe is indeed very limited and scattered. The information used in this report is primarily based on interviews of key persons within the industry and surveys in two communal areas, Silobela and Chiduku, covering 70 households. The author has been a research associate at Zimbabwe Institute of Development Studies (ZIDS) during the period from 1989 to 1991, involved in a research project entitled "The Role of the Seed - Prospects for Food Security and Sustainable Development in Communal Areas of Zimbabwe". ZIDS has provided a fruitful and highly conducive environment for discussion, for which I am very grateful. I particularly appreciate the support that I received from the head of department, Sam Moyo, and research colleagues Ismir Sunga and Roger Mponde. I am indebted to the ZIDS secretarial, administrative and library staffs for the excellent assistance they have given me

A general extrudate bulk density model for both twin-screw and single-screw extruder extrusion cooking processes

Effects of extrusion parameters and raw materials on extrudate expansion are respectively investigated in a twin-screw extruder and a single-screw extruder extrusion cooking experiments for fish feed, wheat, and oat & wheat mixture processing. A new phenomenological model is proposed to correlated extrudate bulk density, extrusion parameters and raw material changes based on the experimental results. The average absolute deviation (AAD) of the correlation is 2.2% for fish feed extrusion in the twin-screw extrusion process. For the single-screw extrusion process, the correlation AAD is respectively 3.03%, 5.14% for wheat and oat & wheat mixture extrusion; and the correlation AAD is 6.6% for raw material change effects. The correlation results demonstrate that the proposed equation can be used to calculate extrudate bulk density for both the twin-screw extruder and the single-screw extruder extrusion cooking processes

Gut bacteria and necrotizing enterocolitis: cause or effect?

Development of necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) is considered to be dependent on the bacterial colonisation of the gut. With little concordance between published data and a recent study failing to detect a common strain in infants with NEC, more questions than answers are arising about our understanding of this complex disease