Assessing the Impact of Cowpea and Sorghum Research and Extension in Northern Cameroon

Crop Production/Industries, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession, Downloads July 2008 - July 2009: 7,

Assessing the Impact of Cowpea and Sorghum Research and Extension in Northern Cameroon

Throughout Africa, per capita food production has been declining since the early 1960s. Cameroon has sought to counter this trend by increasing agricultural productivity through research and extension. In order to establish future investment priorities, policy makers need to know if past agricultural research investments have earned sufficient returns to justify continued funding. Further, national experiences need to be compared to see if returns varied across programs, and in cases where they did, explanations need to be sought to discover why these variations exist. To address these issues, data were collected in Cameroon and analyzed in order to estimate the benefits and costs of investments in sorghum and cowpea research and extension in northern Cameroon. Specific data that were needed to construct benefit and cost streams included the following: yields of traditional and introduced technologies, area harvested, adoption rates of technological innovations, prices of both inputs and outputs, climatic factors influencing both the research agenda and the returns to this research, and the costs of research and extension efforts. Focusing on the period 1979-87, the analysis addressed three questions: What were the returns to past investments? What factors explained the estimated returns and any variability in returns between the sorghum and cowpea programs? And how did institutions influence these returns and the distribution of their benefits?food security, food policy, cowpea, sorghum, Crop Production/Industries, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Downloads July 2008 - June 2009: 17, Q16,

Gamestorming Virtual Reference

How do you build rapport with students in a chat session? How do you get the word out about virtual reference to students you may never see in the Library? Try the gamestorming method “Challenge Cards” to get ideas for improving virtual reference services at your institution, as well as your virtual reference skills. With this method, you will divide up into two teams. One team will brainstorm problems or challenges with virtual reference. Independently, the other team will brainstorm features and strengths of virtual reference. Then play begins. The challenge team picks a card and puts it on the table. If the solutions team has a card to address the challenge, they get a point, if they don’t, the challenge team gets a point and teams work together to design cards to address the challenge. Play continues until all challenges have been addressed. Have fun and learn from librarians at other institutions about how to meet challenges involved in providing virtual reference

Review of \u3ci\u3eThe Lipan Apaches: People of the Wind and Lightning\u3c/i\u3e by Thomas A. Britten

The Lipan Apaches is the first comprehensive study of a people who were important, integral actors in the history of the Southern Plains, most especially the history of Texas. Rather than casting the Lipans as the victims of Spanish or later American conquest, this meticulously researched work brings to life Lipan history, one steeped in a tradition of adaptation and cultural reinvention that of necessity was constantly responding to new and often painful shifting social realities. Britten poses these questions: Who were the Lipan Apaches and under what circumstances did a tribal identity emerge ? To what extent did they have control over their destiny

Impacts of U.S. Graduate Degree Training on Capacity Building in Developing Countries: A Case Study of the Pulse CRSP

The Dry Grain Pulses Collaborative Research Support Program (Pulse CRSP) had allocated a major part of its resources to providing graduate degree training (GDT) of scientists/researchers in order to strengthen agricultural research capacity in Africa, Latin America, and the U.S. However, no systematic attempt had been made to assess the impact of this investment. The study adopted the Kirkpatrick framework as a guide for evaluating the impacts of GDT by the Pulse CRSP. The results were drawn from a survey of former trainees and researchers, supplemented by interviews with scientists and program administrators and an institutional case study. An important finding was that over 86% of host country trainees returned to their home country. In their enhanced capacity, trainees made contributions to the advancement of bean/cowpea research that can be attributed to their graduate degree training. Trainees reported that their GDT was necessary for their professional development and was highly relevant to their current job responsibility.Impact assessment, Pulse CRSP, USAID, Training, Graduate degree, Beans, Cowpeas, International Development, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession, Q16-R&D-Agricultural technology-Biofuels-Agricultural Extension Services,

Growers' Perspective on Attracting Migrant Labor and Migrants' Workplace Choice in Michigan

This study was conducted to analyze Michigan's migrant farm labor situation. Data were collected from growers and migrants. Growers reported wages, housing, and perquisites as tools they use to attract migrants. Migrants reported housing, wages, grower honesty, and respectful treatment of workers to be key factors in choosing a workplace.Labor and Human Capital,

Major issues in designing a research programme on household food insecurity

A conference paper on household food insecurity in Southern Africa.Over the past decade, the economies in Southern African have experienced difficulties in meeting the food needs of their population. The reasons for household food insecurity include exogenous factors such as drought, high oil prices, and declining terms of trade for cash crops and raw materials; civil strife; lack of appropriate technology; poor performance of supporting research, credit, marketing and extension institutions; and inappropriate agricultural and macroeconomic policies. Morover, under conditions of rapid population growth, pressure is placed on the natural resource base—leading to resource degradation which threatens the sustainability of agriculture in future years (Eicher, 1986; Jayne, et. al., 1987). Due to these factors, the food security of many rural households throughout Southern Africa is at risk.The research supporting the preparation the proceedings papers was financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, Bureau of Science and Technology; Bureau for Africa; and the Southern Africa Regional Programme

Remembering past exchanges : apes fail to use social cues

The authors thank the Danish National Research Foundation [DNRF89] for funding.Nonhuman primates can remember events from their distant past. Furthermore, they can distinguish between very similar events by the process of binding. So far, research into long-term memory and binding has focused on the binding of contextual information, such as spatial surroundings. As such, we aimed to investigate if apes can bind and retrieve other types of information, specifically, social information. We presented great apes with three different object types; they learnt to exchange (via reinforcement) one of the object types with one experimenter and another type with a second, different, experimenter. The remaining object type was not reinforced by either of the experimenters. After a delay of two or ten weeks, we assessed the apes’ memory of which object type was exchanged with which experimenter. Additionally, we introduced a new experimenter to see if the apes could infer by exclusion that the remaining object type should be exchanged with the new experimenter. The apes successfully remembered which object types were exchanged, but failed to distinguish which object type was exchanged with whom. This failure to bind an object type to a specific person may have resulted from the apes learning to use a rule based on recency, as opposed to learning a conditional rule involving social information. However, results from a second experiment suggested they fail to incorporate social information even when no other information could guide successful performance. Our findings are consistent with research showing long-term memory in primates, but suggest that social information may not be bound in memory as readily as spatial or contextual information.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

CAN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION IN THE MARGINAL LANDS CONTRIBUTE TO IMPROVING FOOD SECURITY IN THE SAHELIAN AFRICAN COUNTRIES: AN EVIDENCE FROM THE BAS-FOND RICE PRODUCTION IN MALI

To improve national food security, successive Mali governments have always focused on expanding and intensifying production in the government-managed irrigation schemes (Office du Niger), which account for about 50% of domestic rice production. Because the cost of expanding and rehabilitating those schemes is high, the government is looking for complementary cost-effective ways to achieve this goal. The government could increase domestic rice supply by investing in improving the farmer-managed inland valley swamps. Although the government has paid little attention to those marginal lands, farmers have been growing rice in these areas using traditional technologies. This paper used data from a survey of 334 bas-fond farmers and secondary data to examine the potential contribution that these undeveloped bas-fonds could make to improve food security and rice exports in Mali. The study found that, if fully developed, the bas-fonds and flooded plains could produce more rice than is currently being supplied by the Office du Niger, or imported through commercial imports or food aid. As expected, rice yields in the bas-fonds are lower than in the Office du Niger. However, bas-fonds rice production is both financially profitable and provides a higher return per day of family labor than the competing upland crops (maize, sorghum/millet and cotton). In addition, the estimated domestic resources cost ratios show that, compared to the Office d u Niger, bas-fond rice production represents a better use of domestic resources, both for producing rice for home consumption and for the market.Crop Production/Industries, Food Security and Poverty, Land Economics/Use,

FINANCIAL PROFITABILITY OF MALI-SUD BAS-FOND RICE PRODUCTION SYSTEMS

The high costs of rehabilitating and/or expanding government-managed irrigated schemes in Mali (Office du Niger) has prompted policy-makers and researchers to explore the potential for the underdeveloped farmer-managed bas-fond to contribute to ensure an adequate rice supply and increase rural households' incomes. Because little is known about nas-fond rice production in Mali, this paper analyzes its financial profitability based on data collected from a random sample of 221 farmers. Data analysis revealed that there are numerous rice production systems in the bas-fond. Budget analysis showed that the four most common bas-fond production systems yield higher returns than the opportunity cost of labor and they are more profitable than the main upland crops competing with rice for farmers labor (cotton, sorghum/millet, and maize). Within a given bas-fond system, however, profitability varies considerably across farms.Agricultural Finance, Crop Production/Industries,