Sub-Saharan African Cotton Policies in Retrospect

Using a series of market structure criteria, this paper gives a panorama of policies and reforms in all sub-saharan African cotton producing countries from the early 1960s to the present time. Reporting institutional changes precisely and in a consistent manner for all countries offers new opportunities for empirical comparative work. In addition, we identify trends in policy changes, which, to our knowledge, have not yet been described; in particular, we observe a recent but clear tendency towards re-regulation, which, interestingly, seems to transcend the traditional geographical divide.Crop Production/Industries,

Resampling: an improvement of Importance Sampling in varying population size models

Sequential importance sampling algorithms have been defined to estimate likelihoods in models of ancestral population processes. However, these algorithms are based on features of the models with constant population size, and become inefficient when the population size varies in time, making likelihood-based inferences difficult in many demographic situations. In this work, we modify a previous sequential importance sampling algorithm to improve the efficiency of the likelihood estimation. Our procedure is still based on features of the model with constant size, but uses a resampling technique with a new resampling probability distribution depending on the pairwise composite likelihood. We tested our algorithm, called sequential importance sampling with resampling (SISR) on simulated data sets under different demographic cases. In most cases, we divided the computational cost by two for the same accuracy of inference, in some cases even by one hundred. This study provides the first assessment of the impact of such resampling techniques on parameter inference using sequential importance sampling, and extends the range of situations where likelihood inferences can be easily performed

Agricultural insurances based on meteorological indices: realizations, methods and research challenges

In many low-income countries, agriculture is mostly rainfed and crop yield depends highly on climatic factors. Furthermore, farmers have little access to traditional crop insurance, which suffers from high information asymmetry and transaction costs. Insurances based on meteorological indices could fill this gap since they do not face such drawbacks. However, a full-scale implementation has been slow so far. In this article, the most advanced projects that have taken place in developing countries using these types of crop insurances are described. Following this, the methodology that has been used to design such projects in order to choose the meteorological index, the indemnity schedule and the insurance premium, is described. Finally the main research issues are discussed. In particular, more research is needed on implementation, assessment of benefits, how to deal with climate change, spatial variability of weather and interactions with other hedging methods.agriculture; insurance; climatic risk

Key Elements of Organizational Transformation: Lessons Learned from the Provider Transformation Network

This document contains slides from a presentation given at The Arc Summer Leadership Institute in 2019. The information covers key lessons in organizational transformation that can help disability services providers implement best practices

Mapping mean and variance of runoff in a river basin

International audienceThe study presents an approach to depict the two first order moments of runoff as a function of area (and thus on a map). The focal point is the mapping of the statistical properties of runoff q=q(A,D) in space (area A) and time (time interval D). The problem is divided into two steps. Firstly the first order moment (the long term mean value) is analysed and mapped applying an interpolation procedure for river runoff. In a second step a simple random model for the river runoff process is proposed for the instantaneous point runoff normalised with respect to the long term mean. From this model theoretical expressions for the time-space variance-covariance of the inflow to the river network are developed, which then is used to predict how the second order moment vary along rivers from headwaters to the mouth. The observation data are handled in the frame of a hydrological information system HydroDem, which allows displaying the results either in the form of area dependence of moments along the river branches to the basin outlet or as a map of the variation of the moments across the basin space. The findings are demonstrated on the example of the Moselle drainage basin (French part)

A propos des Viandes insuffisantes. Deux mots mal appropriés et un mot pour les remplacer

Leblois Charles. A propos des viandes insuffisantes. Deux mots mal appropriés et un mot pour les remplacer. In: Bulletin de l'Académie Vétérinaire de France tome 104 n°9, 1951. pp. 471-474

Deux abcès ossifluents bacillaires chez un Boeuf

Leblois Charles. Deux abcès ossifluents bacillaires chez un Boeuf. In: Bulletin de l'Académie Vétérinaire de France tome 101 n°7, 1948. pp. 289-291