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

Agriculture in Britain as a Mature Industrial Society

SUMMARY The post World War II phase of rapidly increasing British agricultural productivity, based upon the substitution of capital for labour, and upon cheap fossil fuels and heavy chemical dressing, is coming to an end. The cost of inputs and the diminishing returns that result from these policies, as well as problems of soil exhaustion and water pollution, signal a change of pattern in British farming. This pattern, it is argued, could produce a variety of benefits, which might include higher productivity per hectare (though not necessarily per worker) greater national and regional self?sufficiency in food, with consequent benefits to the British balance of payments, a net absorption rather than extrusion of labour, and even an improved dietary balance for the nation. RESUME L'agriculture en Grande?Bretagne en tant que société industrielle mure L'ère de !a productivité agricole britannique dans la période postérieure à la deuxième guerre mondiale, dont l'augmentation rapide se fondait sur la substitution de ta main?d'oeuvre par le capital, et sur les combustibles fossiles à bon marché et une lourde façon chimique, tire à sa fin. Le coût des engrais et le rendement décroissant qui résulte de ces mesures, ainsi que les problèmes de l'épuisement du sol et de la pollution de l'eau, signalent une nouvelle forme d'agriculture én Grande?Bretagne. Cette transformation, prétend?on, rapporterait toutes sortes de bénéfices, qui pourraient comporter une augmentation du rendement par hectare (mais pas nécessairement par travailleur), une plus grande mesure d'autonomie nationale et régionale en matière de denrées alimentaires, ce qui entrainerait une amélioration de la balance des paiements britannique, une absorption nette plutôt qu'une extrusion de la main?d'oeuvre, voire même un meilleur équilibre alimentaire pour la nation. RESUMEN La agricultura en Gran Bretaña como sociedad industrial avanzada Brian Johnson y Michael Allanby Estamos asistiendo al final del período que siguió a la Segunda Guerra Mundial, en que no había dejado de aumentarla productividad agrícola de Gran Bretaña, basada en la sustitución del trabajo por el capital, así como en combustibles baratos y en intensa preparación química. El coste de las inversiones y la disminución de los beneficios que resultaron de estas políticas, así como el problema del agotamiento del suelo y de la contaminación del agua, anuncian un cambio de estructura en la agricultura británica. Se quiere que esta nueva estructura produzca toda una serie de beneficios, en el sentido de una productividad mayor por hectárea (aunque no necesariamente por trabajador), mayor independencia nacional y regional en alimentos, con las consiguientes ventajas para la balanza de pagos británica, mejor empleo de la mano de obra e incluso mayor equilibrio dietético para el país

Socio-Economic Factors Affecting the Income of Small-scale Agroforestry Farms in Hill Country Areas in Yemen: A comparison of OLS and WLS Determinants

Yemen is a less-developed country in the Arabian Peninsula, with only 3% arable land. An agroforestry land-use system has been practiced traditionally by small-scale farmers, but is associated with low productivity and income. A study has been undertaken to determine the socio-economic attributes of farmers that influence the financial performance of agroforestry and nonagroforestry farms in the Bura’a Mountain region. A survey was conducted of 150 farmers involved in both agroforestry and non-agroforestry. Both OLS and WLS regression were applied, and coefficients compared in terms of consistency and goodness of fit. Incomes of farmers were found to be influenced by education, area of land, livestock holding, family size, and whether coffee is grown, but not farmer’s age. The WLS method produced efficient and consistent results, whereas OLS regression was affected by the heteroscedasticity. The findings of the study indicate that the farmers of the study area are in need of financial and technical support from government to increase their income. Infrastructural development and public intervention in developing farmers’ technical know-how could enhance production and ensure the optimum use of land as well as soil and water conservation

Inter-rater reliability of welfare outcomeassessment by an expert and farmers of SouthTyrolean dairy farming

The implementation of an animal welfare assurance programme for dairy cattle in South Tyrol (Eastern Italian Alps) faces particular feasibility constraints due to the outstanding volume of travel associated with routine on-farm audits of remote mountain farms. Therefore, this study aims to estimate the inter-rater reliability of the expert’s and farmers’ welfare outcome assessment regarding recommendations to involve milk producers in animal welfare assurance within South Tyrolean dairy farming. A formal training programme containing a classroom session and an on-farm observation became mandatory for all 188 participating farmers, which was offered by the expert, applied as reference standard. On-farm data collected on the farmers’ cows (dataset of 1719 dairy cows) were compared at animal level. Cohen’s kappa, respectively, weighted kappa, examined for several welfare indicators, range from slight to moderate agreement(k=0.018-0.416;Kw=0.163-0.310). These findings are further confirmed by results at farmlevel (ICC=0.018-0.577). Continuous repeatability checks as part of routine audits are therefore proposed to substantially reduce the variability between the raters and to avoid significant bias in the welfare outcome assessment. In this way, the competence for regular and standardised monitoring could be increasingly transferred to dairy farmers in order to reduce the need for costly and time-consuming inspections by external auditors, which are in long-term perspective also harmful to the alpine environment. Additionally, the promotion of welfare assessment as an instructive management tool would intensify farmers’ commitment to the assessment process

‘Not all of us can be nurses’: proposing and resisting entrepreneurship education in rural Lesotho

Education in Lesotho, as in much of the world, has historically held out the promise of a ‘better future’. Success in school and the achievement of academic credentials were expected to lead to a secure future in the formal economy. With increasing school enrolment and growing youth unemployment, such futures are now illusory for most youth. In 2009, Lesotho introduced a radical new curriculum that aims to instil in young people skills and attitudes for entrepreneurship, enabling them to build their own futures in an increasingly uncertain world. Based on 9-months’ ethnographic fieldwork in two primary schools and their surrounding rural communities, we trace how the new curriculum is being delivered in schools and how it is intervening in children’s aspirations. Despite lessons intended to prepare them for livelihoods in the informal economy, young Basotho prize the security of a salaried job as a nurse, teacher, police officer, or soldier. We frame this contradiction in relation to concepts of doxic and habituated aspirations, concluding that due to the way schools deliver entrepreneurship education it both fails to displace long-standing doxic aspirations to professional careers, and fails to engage with young people’s habituated expectations of rural livelihoods.ESR

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

Cross-Sector Review of Drivers and Available 3Rs Approaches for Acute Systemic Toxicity Testing

Acute systemic toxicity studies are carried out in many sectors in which synthetic chemicals are manufactured or used and are among the most criticized of all toxicology tests on both scientific and ethical grounds. A review of the drivers for acute toxicity testing within the pharmaceutical industry led to a paradigm shift whereby in vivo acute toxicity data are no longer routinely required in advance of human clinical trials. Based on this experience, the following review was undertaken to identify (1) regulatory and scientific drivers for acute toxicity testing in other industrial sectors, (2) activities aimed at replacing, reducing, or refining the use of animals, and (3) recommendations for future work in this area