EFFECTS OF SOCIO-CULTURAL FACTORS ON EFFECTIVE AGRICULTURAL TRAINING PROGRAMS FOR FARMERS BY THE BENUE STATE AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY IN ZONE C

Most agricultural innovations were not sustainably adopted due to incompatibility to social and cultural practices. Based on this proposition, this study was designed to analyze the effects of socio-cultural factors on agricultural training programs for farmers by the Benue State Agricultural and Rural Development Authorities (BNARDA) for farmers in Zone C. Seven communities were purposively selected due to their unique cultural practices and a total of 118 respondents were randomly selected for the study. Questionnaire was used as tool for data collection.  Descriptive statistics and logit regression were used for data analysis. The results show that there were 22 % of respondents aged between 50-60 years, 72 % of them were married and about 60 % had at least secondary educational attainment.  Annual income of respondents was between ₦80,000.00 - ₦100,000.00. About 72 % had farming experience of less than 10 years, and 31 % were cosmopolites. The result further shows that fear of ostracization was among the major reasons that inhibit training program participations. The results of logit analysis show that education (-3.3987), gender (2.268), rivers/streams (-.732) and leadership (2.150) were significantly affect training program. It was concluded that farmer who have strong cultural beliefs were responsible for non- participation in the training program. It was recommended that aggressive advocacy program be embarked by BNARDA before packaging a training program for the farmers

Examining the patterns of disaggregate energy security risk and crude oil price: the USA scenario over 1970-2040

Beyond the environmental drawback of fossil energy sources, energy security remains a salient concern for economic development and environmental sustainability. This explains why the influence of energy security and its components (economic, geopolitical, reliability, environmental) on the price of crude oil commodity, espe cially in the United States of America, is considered in this study up to the period 2040 (i.e., from 1970 to 2040). Using the Kernel-Based Regularized Least Squares (KRLS) approach supported by the robustness of the quantile regression, the result shows an increase in aggregate energy security risk spur crude oil price by an elasticity of ~0.9. With a positive impact on oil price, the economic, geopolitical, and reliability perspectives of energy se curity risk exhibit respective elasticity of ~2.0, ~0.6, and ~0.7, thus confirming that a positive shock in each aspect aggravates the oil price hike in the country. Contrarily, an increase in environmental risk could spiral a decline and an inelastic (~− 1.5) change in crude oil price, thus suggesting a desirable net zero future and a significant crash in oil price arising from clean and alternative energy source adoption. Furthermore, retail electricity price and energy expenditures are used as control variables, and crude oil prices respond positively and negatively to the increase in energy expenditures and electricity price, respectively. Several accounts of policy insights are highlighted in these results.publishedVersio

The influence of renewable energy and economic freedom aspects on ecological sustainability in the G7 countries

With the exemption of Canada, the G-7 countries have largely flourished at the detriment of their ecological sustainability bearing in mind that these countries' have remained ecologically deficit for several decades. Given the potential effect of environmental degradation associated with the trend of ecological deficit of these countries, this study attempts to understand the contribution of renewable energy dimensions through the measure of renewable energy efficiency and renewable energy use alongside evaluating the role of the four main aspects of economic freedom. By using empirical tools, the findings revealed that renewable energy aspects contribute to environmental sustainability among the countries through a significant mitigation of their ecological footprint. Importantly, the aspects of economic freedom, that is, government size, legal system and property rights, freedom to trade internationally, and regulation hampers environmental sustainability by increasing the countries ecological footprint. The elasticity of impact of this dimension of economic freedom is in the range of 0.19–0.21 at 1% statistically significant level. However,population of these countries does not show a detrimental effect, rather the finding revealed that population improves environmental quality by a statistically significant degree. Given these revelations, there are deducible policy take home from this study.© 2022 The Authors. Sustainable Development published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

The effects of gas flaring as moderated by government quality in leading natural gas flaring economies

This study seeks to address pertinent economic and environmental issues associated with natural gas flaring, especially for the world's leading natural gas flaring economies (i.e. Russia, Iraq, Iran, the United States, Algeria, Venezuela, and Nigeria). By applying relevant empirical panel and country-specific approaches, the study found that fuel energy export positively impacts economic growth with elasticity of ~ 0.22 to ~ 0.24 for the panel examination. It is further revealed that environmental quality in the panel is hampered by increase in economic growth, gas flaring, fuel energy export, and urbanization. Moreover, for the country-wise inference, government quality desirably moderates economic and environmental aspects of gas flaring in Venezuela and Nigeria, and in Russia and Iran respectively. However, government quality moderates gas flaring to cause economic downturn in the USA. Additionally, economic growth increased with increase in urbanisation (in Iraq and the USA), gas flaring (in Iran and the USA), government quality (only in the USA), and fuel energy export (only in Algeria) while economic growth downturn is due to increase urbanisation in Russia and the USA, increase in fuel energy export in the USA, and increase in government quality in Russia. Meanwhile, environmental quality is worsened through intense carbon dioxide emission from increased urbanisation activity (in Iraq, Iran, Algeria, and Nigeria), increased fuel energy export (in Nigeria), increased natural gas flaring (in Algeria and Nigeria), increased GDP (in Russia, Iran, USA, Algeria, and Venezuela), and high government quality (in Iran). Interestingly, the result revealed that increase in GDP (in Nigeria), increase in urbanisation (in the USA), and increase in gas flaring (in Algeria and Nigeria) dampens environmental quality. Importantly, this study offers policy insight into sustainable approaches in natural gas production, government effectiveness, and regulatory quality.© The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. Te images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Influence of foreign direct investment and exchange rate on fisheries in Nigeria

Many studies have explored the impact of macroeconomic factors on the growth and output of the agricultural sector in Nigeria with focus on the aggregate output. Some studies narrowed down focus on the crop subsector while neglecting the fisheries subsector which is an important source of cheap protein for our increasing population, a source of employment for the unemployed and also key to achieving the first three sustainable development goals 2030. In this study, we investigated the influence of FDI on agriculture and exchange rates on the output of the fisheries subsector using time series data that spans from 1980-2018. A Vector Autoregressive Model was also used alongside a growth model. The findings indicate positive growth in the fisheries subsector. FDI to agriculture and exchange rate movements were both found to affect the fisheries subsector positively in the long run, whereas only FDI to agriculture was found to exert a positive influence in the short run. Policies to attract FDI to the sector are thus advocated for, while macroeconomic policies to stabilise the Nigerian currency (naira) against the US dollar are also advised

Examining the environmental aspect of economic complexity outlook and environmental-related technologies in the Nordic states

Understanding the outlook of countries’ economic complexity is vital for assessing the future of industries’ product characterization. It provides opportunity and insight on how to mitigate the negative externalities that arises from the increasing pressure on the ecosystem. Based on this account, the effect of economic complexity and the corresponding outlook on environmental degradation vis-a-vis greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions alongside other environmental indicators are examined for the panel of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden for the period 1995 to 2020. After employing Driscoll- Kraay’s standard errors for random effect (RE) with individual effects for the examination, the results indicate that the region’s level of economic complexity favors environmental sustainability. Contrarily, the economic complexity outlook spurs GHG emissions, thus suggesting that future performance of the region’s economic complexity could be detrimental to its ecosystem. Another similar, and undesirable observation is that the increase in urban population hampers environmental quality as it causes a surge in GHG emissions. Meanwhile, the results then conclude that economic growth, economic complexity, and environmental-related technologies are found to be potent drivers of environmental sustainability as the indicators exert negative pressure on GHG emissions in the Nordic region. Important policies that potentially guide immediate, and future sector-wide activities toward enhancing the region’s sustainable development programs are posited through the study outcome.publishedVersio

Analysing the co-benefit of environmental tax amidst clean energy development in Europe's largest agrarian economies

The increasing human activities amidst competition for resources across the globe has made environmental challenges an ongoing classic problem, thus prompting policymakers to continually seek effective solution while ensuring sustainable development. With the wide coverage of the relevance of the double dividend hypothesis in explaining the co-benefit of environmental tax, there is a dearth of evidence in the literature to suggest that environmental tax offers green dividends for both the environment and agricultural practice in the European countries. As such, this study employed the more recent Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) alongside other approaches for Europe's largest agrarian economies (France, Germany, Italy, and Spain) over the annual period 1995–2020. The investigation affirms the validity of the co-benefit of environmental tax as far as environmental sustainability and value-added to agriculture are concerned in this panel of ‘Big Four’ economies, thus motivating the countries to relentlessly pursue the carbon-neutral 2050 target. Moreover, the study aligns with the expectation that renewable energy utilization and population density are desirable factors for achieving a carbon-neutral target. Lastly, the findings suggest that environmental quality is attainable in the panel, especially as increasing income surpasses a certain threshold, thus validating the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. Above all, the findings provide timely policy insight that accommodates both the environmental sustainability and food security framework of the European Union. The policy options relevant in light of the study's conclusions include that the decision makers in the selected agrarian economies should ramp up energy transition opportunities through a resilient environmental tax system that incentives availability of credit and investment financing in the agriculture sector.© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

The making-or-breaking of material and resource efficiency in the Nordics

The relevance of efficient direct material input through both export market and domestic material sources offers useful material and resource productivity guidelines from both economic and environmental sustainability dimensions. In the current context, the drivers of material and resource efficiency in the Nordic region are examined by utilizing requisite empirical approaches over the period 1995–2020. The investigation revealed that economic activities which are characterized by Gross domestic product (GDP) alongside the growth of urban population and utilization of oil energy are all detrimental to the region’s resource efficiency. It implies that material utilization efficiency cannot be optimized with the current trend of the region’s GDP, urban population growth and the use of dirty energy. Contrarily, the findings, further revealed that alternative energy utilization vis-`a-vis renewables are key indicators to spur material and resource efficiency in the region, thus throwing more support for the region’s unavoidable energy transition goal. These highlighted results alongside the Granger causality inference offer sustainable development measures that are specifically motivated through the improvement of efficient and optimization of output.publishedVersio

Reducing Post-Harvest Losses in Tomatoes

Key Findings -Farmers should have access to improved varieties of seed that have longer shelf life than local varieties. -To reduce post-harvest loses considerably, logistic control activities as well as the support of extension agents and private tomato processing firms must come into action -Quality control practices must be adhered to in order to reduce loss due to deterioration and spoilage

Nutrition and Growing Your Own Food: Dietary Diversity Evidence from North Central Nigeria

Key Findings -Households’ dietary diversity is lower for households that produce a greater share of their own food, compared to households that buy all their food, especially for rural dwellers. -The least food groups produced and consumed by households are eggs, milk, fish & sea products, sweets and fruits which are vital sources of important micro-nutrients needed by the body. -Households produce a set of food items that is too narrow to make their diets diverse