Proposal for the Establishment of an International Buffalo Research Institute in Pakistan

Proposal written by Pakistani Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Rural Development describing the state of knowledge about water buffalo production, management, physiology, and roles in the country's agriculture, which provide, it is argued, justification for the creation of an International Water Buffalo Research Institute in Pakistan. Agenda document presented at TAC Eighth Meeting, July - August 1974

Third Annual Report: Agricultural Sector Analysis in Thailand

The Thailand Agricultural Sector Analysis Program is a cooperative project between Iowa State University, the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (through its Division of Agricultural Economics) and USOM/ Thailand. The project, which has now completed its third year, was initiated July 1, 1973, in response to direct requests by the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives for cooperation and collaboration in the development and application of sector analysis models and methods that have practical utility in guiding future development of Thailand\u27s agriculture at national, regional, and local levels. The agricultural sector analysis planning activity is centered in the Division of Agricultural Economics (DAE) which is in the Office of the Under Secretary of State, Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MOAC), Royal Thai Government. The purpose of the project is to provide Thai planners with an assessment of possible policy decisions at the Kingdom, region, or local level. The focal point of the project is the welfare of the 24 million people living in Thailand\u27s rural households.https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/dae-card_sectoranalysis/1005/thumbnail.jp

Adoption of rice cultivation technologies and its effect on technical efficiency in Sagnarigu District of Ghana

This study examined the adoption of rice cultivation technologies on farmers’ technical efficiency in Sagnarigu District. The stochastic frontier model was used to estimate the determinants of output and technical inefficiency while propensity score matching was also used to analyse the average treatment effect (ATE) and the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT). A total of 120 respondents comprising 60 adopters and 60 non-adopters were randomly selected from six communities in the District and interviewed using semi-structured questionnaires. Farm size, fertilizer, weedicides and household labour had positive and significant effect on rice output. Farmers who adopted the rice cultivation techniques were less technically inefficient than those who did not adopt. The ATT was 0.121 which implies that farmers who adopted the rice technologies increased their technical efficiency by about 12% and this was significant at 10% for the PSM with similar results obtained for the nearest neighbour matching. The ATE value of 0.102 which was also statistically significant at 10% means that farmers on the whole increased their technical efficiency by 10.2%. Moreover, the mean technical efficiency estimates for adopters and non-adopters were about 58% and 48% respectively under regression adjustment and inverse-probability weights. The existence of a technical efficiency gap of 10% between adopters and non-adopters of rice technologies emphasized the significant effect of technology adoption on farmer’s technical efficiency. The study recommends that more rice farmers should be encouraged to adopt the rice production technologies in order to improve their technical efficiency levels

Steps to co-develop agro-climatic bulletin (ACB) for local agricultural planning and decision-making

This guidebook is about managing climate risks and provides a step-by-step manual for the development of climate-informed agricultural advisories or Agro-Climatic Bulletin (ACB). It is based on experiences of a pilot in the Mekong River Delta (MRD) and South-Central Coast (SCC) by the Alliance Bioversity & CIAT with the Department of Crop Production of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD-DCP), and local partners in MRD and SCC. Alongside capacity building materials for training sessions, the manual aims to support the implementation and scaling of ACBs to other districts and provinces in the MRD and SSC and other regions in the country

Rural Development Programme measures on cultivated land in Europe to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions – regional ‘hotspots’ and priority measures

© 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.Agriculture is a significant source of GHG emissions, contributing 10% of total emissions within the EU-28. Emissions from European agriculture have been reduced, albeit at the expense of crop yield and the risk of production displacement (the transfer of production, and associated emissions, to land outside of Europe). This article assesses the impact on GHG emissions of selected European Rural Development Program measures, representative of a diversity of management strategies implemented on cultivated land, within nine European Member States. Climatic zone and underlying spatial environmental variables were accounted for using a novel technique, “Regional Variation Categories,” developed with European-scale GIS data sets. Production displacement is assessed with two benchmarks: (1) compared with existing crop production and (2) relative to a “minimum requirement” land management scenario, where an emissions reduction of less than this does not constitute mitigation. Most measures reduce emissions relative to the baseline crop scenario; however, many do not reduce emissions beyond the “minimum requirement,” this being limited to measures such as catch crops and within-field grass areas to prevent soil erosion. The selection and targeting of measures to maximize agricultural GHG mitigation on cultivated land within Europe is discussed...Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Combining two national‐scale datasets to map soil properties, the case of available magnesium in England and Wales

Given the costs of soil survey it is necessary to make the best use of available datasets, but data that differ with respect to some aspect of the sampling or analytical protocol cannot be combined simply. In this paper we consider a case where two datasets were available on the concentration of plant‐available magnesium in the topsoil. The datasets were the Representative Soil Sampling Scheme (RSSS) and the National Soil Inventory (NSI) of England and Wales. The variable was measured over the same depth interval and with the same laboratory method, but the sample supports were different and so the datasets differ in their variance. We used a multivariate geostatistical model, the linear model of coregionalization (LMCR), to model the joint spatial distribution of the two datasets. The model allowed us to elucidate the effects of the sample support on the two datasets, and to show that there was a strong correlation between the underlying variables. The LMCR allowed us to make spatial predictions of the variable on the RSSS support by cokriging the RSSS data with the NSI data. We used cross‐validation to test the validity of the LMCR and showed how incorporating the NSI data restricted the range of prediction error variances relative to univariate ordinary kriging predictions from the RSSS data alone. The standardized squared prediction errors were computed and the coverage of prediction intervals (i.e. the proportion of sites at which the prediction interval included the observed value of the variable). Both these statistics suggested that the prediction error variances were consistent for the cokriging predictions but not for the ordinary kriging predictions from the simple combination of the RSSS and NSI data, which might be proposed on the basis of their very similar mean values. The LMCR is therefore proposed as a general tool for the combined analysis of different datasets on soil properties

Anthropometric indices and selected nutrient intakes of young children in Kwangju, Korea

The assessment of children's nutritional intakes is important because any nutritional inadequacies or toxicities may have adverse consequences. Studies on the nutritional intakes of Korean children are limited. The aims of this study were to determine anthropometric indices, estimate selected nutrient intakes of young Korean children, and compare these intakes with current Dietary Reference Intakes for Koreans. This study included 136 healthy children (65 boys, 71 girls), 2-6 y old, living in Kwangju, Korea. Weights and heights were measured. Three consecutive 24-h food recalls were obtained. According to International Obesity TaskForce BMI cutoffs, 8% were overweight and 2% were obese. The energy intakes of 40% were < Korean Estimated Energy Requirements, while all subjects consumed ≥ Korean Estimated Average Requirement (EAR) for protein. The majority of the children consumed > Korean EAR for iron, zinc, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, vitamin B6, and niacin. Vitamin E intakes of 65% of the Korean children were < Korean Adequate Intake, and approximately half of the subjects had < Korean EAR for calcium and for folate. Many young children in Kwangju, Korea, likely have inadequate status of calcium, folate, and vitamin E