Primary signet-ring cell carcinoma of vermiform appendix: a rare case report

Appendiceal primary signet ring cell carcinoma is an extremely rare neoplasm considered to be more aggressive than other appendiceal tumour. Primary appendiceal carcinoma is diagnosed in only 0.9%–1.4% of appendectomy specimens and signet-ring cell carcinoma (SRCC) of vermiform appendix is accounting 0.43% of all appendiceal malignancies. Patients of SRCC usually present clinically as acute appendicitis. Preoperative imaging detection of appendiceal adenocarcinoma have limited benefit due it has minimal change like appendicitis or wall thickening without any obvious growth. We reported an extremely rare case of primary signet ring cell carcinoma of the vermiform appendix in a 55 year old man. Patient had abdominal pain, anorexia and nausea. He underwent appendectomy for appendicitis and histopathologically diagnosed as appendiceal signet ring cell carcinoma with lymph node metastasis

Designing CS Farming Systems towards Carbon-Neutral Sustainable Agriculture in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, India

In the South India region, the inefficient use and mismanagement of production resources, especially land, water, energy and agro-chemicals, have vastly impacted health of the natural resource base resulting into global warming led climatic variability. Several climate-smart agricultural practices (CSAPs) developed, refined and tested by several agencies and research organizations, demonstrated improved productivity, resilience and adaptive capacity for different commodities and agro-ecological zones within the region. However, the perception of farmers on climate vulnerability and responses of the CSAPs vary with bio-physical and socio-economic diversity of farm households. The lack of integration of bio-physical and socio-economic knowledge in technology targeting, limits the large-scale adoption by diaspora of farmers specially marginalized and women farmers. Therefore, development and targeting portfolios of CSAPs require in-depth understanding of the diversity of farming practices, and assessment of various interventions on the adaptive capacity of farming community as well as food security. Designing and applying adapted household survey to understand the diversity of farming systems in each location. The major cropping systems in Andhra Pardesh and Telanana, India are maize-maize and rice-maize where the farmer’s field size is very small comparatively. Conducted meetings and trainings with group of farmers in selected villages through demonstration of different interventions and distributed required implements to small holding farmers, trained them about LCC, GS and MNBS by experts. Also visited progressive farmers’ field and planned about the rabi sowing crop and shared to the data collection sheet and urea calculator

Conservation Agriculture: Gateway for Sustainable Intensification of Smallholder Systems

The Conservation Agriculture (CA) practices with increased acceptance across the globe are being considered as harbinger for sustainable intensification of smallholder production systems. Its positive impact on natural resources, and adaptation to and mitigation of climate change effects are widely acknowledged. In developing world specially Asia and Africa, CA is a relatively new introduction and hence capacity development is vital for development, adaptation and scaling CA based technologies for impact at scale on smallholder farmers in these regions. The training objectives were centered on understanding Conservation Agriculture (CA) and its applications in Asia and Africa. The key findings from the training were that participants need more collaboration with educational institutions and stakeholders when it comes to new knowledge and information, that they would need to re-visit the research, education, and extension linkages vis-à-vis the CA practices, and that the information gained during the course had to cascade to students and the farming community. The participants were pleased that the CA practices was out and that they could begin to explore different areas they could implement on-site in their contexts. Furthermore, participants noted that the CA practices was a useful technology to their work situations. Finally, the participants stated that the partnerships they had with the different experts represented by the different institutions was paramount to the subsequent programs and activities, that would follow the CA practices

Role of Women in Crop Residue Management for Better Health

The role of women has changed dramatically from stone age to contemporary global society. The process of Industrialization, modernization and globalization show its deep impact on human society all over the world. The role and responsibilities of women have attained new definition and perspective. On the encouraging side, in the Northwest India, there has been a relatively increase in economic participation in the past one decade. Development programmes and policies have largely tended to focus on women in isolation with little effort to work alongside men and include them in restructuring social relations to mainstream gender. If women’s empowerment is to be achieved and sustained in agriculture, it must be complemented by programmes that include working with men to bring about the desired structural change. The training workshop was conducted to motivate the women folks of Haryana villages to participate in the agricultural activities, support to bring change and updating in farming practices by adopting new trending mechanization and techniques like Happy Seeder, Green Seeker, Soil Humidity Meter, adopt techniques like ‘Lekha-Jhokha’ for better farming practices, and to earn profits by their contributions. The main focus was to make aware women to participate in no burning of rice crop residue, so that they can influence in reducing the air pollution and strengthen the Conservation Agriculture (CA), to enhance the field nutrients by sustainable agricultural practices

Youth Farmer’s Training : Business Model for Scaling Happy Seeder Technology

Rural youth continue to face challenges related to unemployment, underemployment and poverty. Despite the agricultural sector’s ample potential to provide income-generating opportunities for rural youth, challenges related specifically to youth participation in this sector and more importantly options for overcoming them are not extensively documented. For youth to successfully participate in the agricultural sector, access to both information and education are crucial. In addition to knowledge of agricultural production and processing techniques and the relative know-how, young farmers need access to information about finance, land and markets.The training strongly emphasized participatory extension principles and entrepreneurship as means of increasing farm productivity amongst young farmers. Utilizing field mechanization as a means of optimizing the number of youth engaged in face-to-face learning, past workshops were held for young farmers that served to provide space for interactions with experts, discuss methods for improving delivery of services, and learn a new component of agribusiness and entrepreneurship with the intent of transferring this information to more youth farmers in a similar way

A Compendium of Key Climate Smart Agriculture Practices in Intensive Cereal Based Systems of South Asia

CSA initially proposed by FAO in 2010 at “The Hague Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (CC)”, to address the need for a strategy to manage agriculture and food systems, under climate change. The CSA by its original proponents describes the three objectives; i) sustainably increasing agricultural productivity to support equitable increases in incomes, food security and development; ii) adapting and building resilience to climate change from the farm to national levels; and iii) developing opportunities to reduce GHG emissions from agriculture compared with past trends. Since then, these three objectives (in short food security, adaptation and mitigation) are designated as the three “pillars” (or criteria) of CSA within the agricultural science and development communities. Climate Smart (Sustainable Management of Agricultural Resources and Techniques) Agriculture is an approach of crop production, which deals with the management of available agricultural resources with latest management practices and farm machinery, under a particular set of edaphic and environmental conditions. It works to enhance the achievement of national food security and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). CSA is location specific and tailored to fit the agro-ecological and socio-economic conditions of a location. CSA may be defined as “agriculture that sustainably increases productivity, resilience (adaptation), reduces/removes greenhouse gases (mitigation), and enhances achievement of national food security and development goals.” Therefore, if CSA implemented at right time with required resources, techniques and knowledge in a particular typological domain, will lead towards food security while improving adaptive capacity and mitigating potential for sustainable agriculture production

How profitable climate smart agricultural practices are? Voice of farmers from rice-wheat ecologies

Farm record keeping can provide a look into the health of farm business, its profitability, and a snapshot in time of its present equity. However, farmers in developing country seldom maintain written records of farm operations. In many cases, farmers consider it worthless exercise. They feel overwhelmed by record keeping because it takes time, a change in behavior and for some, the requirement to learn a new skill. This study assesses the role of record keeping, particularly among women and youth using data collected in afarmers participatory research undertaken under the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). Farmers (both male and female) in climate smart villages (CSVs) of Haryana were acquainted with farm Lekha Jokha (farm budgeting) booklet designed by CIMMYT-CCAFS partners and training to fill the information was given by the field staff including male and females (CIMMYT-CCAFS 2014). The study was undertaken during 2014-15 and 2015-16. Based on the data recorded through Lekha Jokha, the study also estimated the adoption and economics of different climate smart agricultural practices (CSAPs). The farm budgeting found to be very effective tool for increased awareness among women and men farmers especially youth which lead to accelerated adoption of CSAPs. With adoption of CSAPs proven reduced climatic risk was observed in terms of yield penalty, income and distress. The results identifies a platform for social inclusive development in agriculture to promote evidence based informed policy decisions for investment prioritization

Does climate-smart village approach influence gender equality in farming households? A case of two contrasting ecologies in India

Evidence from climate-smart village (CSV) approach to mainstream climate-smart agriculture (CSA) demonstrates improved productivity, income, and reduced climatic risks. However, its contribution to gender empowerment in diverse farming households is not documented. This study creates a Gender Empowerment Index for climate-smart villages (GEI-CSV) based on four major measurable indicators—political, economic, agricultural, and social. The gender gap was derived by mapping difference in empowerment levels across selected CSVs and non-CSVs. These indicators can be used as a vital tool to understand the process of gender empowerment that can trigger the entry points to achieve gender equality, which is also an important aspect in the adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices (CSAPs). The study measures empowerment at the inter-household and intra-household level across CSVs and non-CSVs from the individual household survey with both female and male members of the same household. This paper provides evidence demonstrating how gender empowerment differs in CSVs and non-CSVs from selected climate-smart villages (community-based approach) in two contrasting ecologies and socio-economic settings of India. The study documents the existing gender gap in CSVs and non-CSVs across India’s western (Haryana) and eastern (Bihar) Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP). Irrespective of CSVs and non-CSVs, considerable differences in outlook and gender gap were observed between Bihar and Haryana. Both women and men in Bihar are less empowered than they are in Haryana. High empowerment level in CSVs than non-CSVs shows that the concept of CSVs has brought a change towards knowledge and capacity enhancement of both women and men farmers promoting gender equality in farming households with a varying scope of interventions made and required for scaling CSAPs across the diversity of farming households

Crop nutrient management using Nutrient Expert improves yield, increases farmers’ income and reduces greenhouse gas emissions

Reduction of excess nutrient application and balanced fertilizer use are the key mitigation options in agriculture. We evaluated Nutrient Expert (NE) tool-based site-specific nutrient management (SSNM) in rice and wheat crops by establishing 1594 side-by-side comparison trials with farmers’ fertilization practices (FFP) across the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) of India. We found that NE-based fertilizer management can lower global warming potential (GWP) by about 2.5% in rice, and between 12 and 20% in wheat over FFP. More than 80% of the participating farmers increased their crop yield and farm income by applying the NE-based fertilizer recommendation. We also observed that increased crop yield and reduced fertilizer consumption and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by using NE was significantly influenced by the crop type, agro-ecology, soil properties and farmers’ current level of fertilization. Adoption of NE-based fertilizer recommendation practice in all rice and wheat acreage in India would translate into 13.92 million tonnes (Mt) more rice and wheat production with 1.44 Mt less N fertilizer use, and a reduction in GHG of 5.34 Mt CO2e per year over farmers’ current practice. Our study establishes the utility of NE to help implement SSNM in smallholder production systems for increasing crop yields and farmers’ income while reducing GHG emissions