Credit risk management in financing agriculture

A griculture is an inherently risky economic activity. A large array of uncontrollable elements can affect output production and prices, resulting in highly variable economic returns to farm households. In developing countries, farmers also lack access to both modern instruments of risk management—such as agricultural insurance, futures contracts, or guarantee funds—and ex post emergency government assistance. Such farmers rely on different “traditional” coping strategies and risk-mitigation techniques, but most of these are inefficient. Formal and semiformal arrangements—such as contract farming, joint-liability lending, and value-chain integration—have arisen in recent decades, but they too are limited and can be very context sensitive. One consequence of inadequate overall financial risk management is that farmers in general face constrained access to formal finance. The smaller the net worth of the farm household, the worse the degree of exclusion. Formal lenders avoid financing agriculture for a host of reasons: high cost of service delivery, information asymmetries, lack of branch networks, perceptions of low profitability in agriculture, lack of collateral, high levels of rural poverty, or low levels of farmer education and financial literacy. But, predominantly, bank managers around the world say they will not finance agriculture because of the high degree of uncontrolled production and price risk that confronts the sector. A farmer can be an able and diligent manager with an excellent reputation for repayment, guaranteed access to a market, and high-quality technical assistance, but an unexpected drought or flood can force him or her to involuntarily default. In emerging countries with fair to high levels of agricultural market and trade integration, large commercial farmers may escape this predicament because they have the ability to purchase insurance, engage in price hedging, obtain financing overseas, or liquidate assets quickly in the event of a default. Consequently, formal lenders tend to overemphasize the use of immoveable collateral as the primary buffer against default risk, which means they provide services to a limited segment of the farm population. Small- and medium-sized farmers, who constitute the vast majority of farm operators, often do not have secured-title land, which is the preferred type of collateral; if they do, its value may be insufficient to cover the loan in question. Even if farmers have sufficient titled land to collateralize loans, they may refuse low-interest formal loans and assume high-interest informal ones that have no collateral requirements instead. They may also use savings to finance agricultural production because they are averse to risking their most prized possession—land. The result is limited supply or access to formal agricultural financing, even though much of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia is rural and depends on agriculture and livestock rearing for their main livelihood activities.agricultural finance, agriculture finance, Risk management, Rural finance,

Species composition, distribution, and relative abundance of fishes in the coastal habitat off the southeastern United States

Ichthyofauna of the coastal «10 m depth) habitat of the South Atlantic Bight were investigated between Cape Fear, North Carolina, and the St. John's River, Florida. Trawl collections from four nonconsecutive seasons in the period July 1980 to December 1982 indicated that the fish community is dominated by the family Sciaenidae, particularly juvenile forms. Spot (Leiostomus xanthurus) and Atlantic croaker (Micropogonias undulatus) were the two most abundant species and dominated catches during all seasons. Atlantic menhaden (Brevoortin tyrannus) was also very abundant, but only seasonally (winter and spring) dominant in the catches. Elasmobranch fIShes, especially rajiforms and carcharinids, contributed to much of the biomass of fishes collected. Total fish abundance was greatest in winter and lowest in summer and was influenced by the seasonality of Atlantic menhaden and Atlantic croaker in the catches. Biomass was highest in spring and lowest in summer, and was influenced by biomass of spot. Fish density ranged from 321 individuals and 12.2 kg per hectare to 746 individuals and 25.2 kg per hectare. Most species ranged widely throughout the bight, and showed some evidence of seasonal migration. Species assemblages were dominated by ubiquitous year-round residents of the coastal waters of the bight. Diversity (H') was highest in summer, and appeared influenced by the evenness of distribution of individuals among species. (PDF file contains 56 pages.

The ballad of financial dependency: sponsoring in public health professional societies

The European Public Health Association (EUPHA) has become one of the leading voices of public health in Europe. Its annual European Public Health Conference (EPH), jointly organized with the Association of Schools of Public Health in Europe (ASPHER), is now the main platform for direct exchange between scientists and public health practitioners. This is good. And yet there remains a constant irritant, repeatedly discussed in EUPHA boards, covered by a detailed ‘Code of Conduct’,1 and still not resolved to everybody’s satisfaction: the issue of industry sponsoring, in particular by the pharmaceutical sector. ASPHER, the World Federation of Public Health Associations (WFPHA)2 and many national public health professional societies face similar challenges

Loss-tolerant parity measurement for distant quantum bits

We propose a scheme to measure the parity of two distant qubits, while ensuring that losses on the quantum channel between them does not destroy coherences within the parity subspaces. This capability enables deterministic preparation of highly entangled qubit states whose fidelity is not limited by the transmission loss. The key observation is that for a probe electromagnetic field in a particular quantum state, namely a superposition of two coherent states of opposite phases, the transmission loss stochastically applies a near-unitary back-action on the probe state. This leads to a parity measurement protocol where the main effect of the transmission losses is a decrease in the measurement strength. By repeating the non-destructive (weak) parity measurement, one achieves a high-fidelity entanglement in spite of a significant transmission loss

Challenging the state by reproducing its principles. The demand for “Gorkhaland” between regional autonomy and the national belonging

Contrary to assumptions about the dualist relationship between region and nation, I propose to understand both as simultaneously emerging. An analysis of the rhetoric of the “Gorkhaland” movement that demands a separate union state in India to be carved out of West Bengal demonstrates that although the movement challenges the distribution of power over territory, it does so by using a “pan-Indian grammar,” to borrow Baruah’s terminology. This is reflected in imaginative geographies that endow the demanded territory with meaning and render it an ethno-scape, while at the same time presenting it as a viable part of an imagined Indian nation. The Gorkhas attempt to bridge the gap between the “national” and the “regional” and challenge dominant identity ascriptions. In doing so, they stress their multiple belongings and affiliations. In this process the Indian nation is produced at various levels of society

Sexual differentiation and gonad development in striped mullet (Mugil cephalus L.) from South Carolina estuaries*

This study examined the sexual differentiation and reproductive dynamics of striped mullet (Mugil cephalus L.) in the estuaries of South Carolina. A total of 16,464 specimens were captured during the study and histological examination of sex and maturity was performed on a subsample of 3670 fish. Striped mullet were sexually undifferentiated for the first 12 months, began differentiation at 13 months, and were 90% fully differentiated by 15 to 19 months of age and 225 mm total length (TL). The defining morphological characteristics for differentiating males was the elongation of the protogonial germ tissue in a corradiating pattern towards the center of the lobe, the development of primary and secondary ducts, and the lack of any recognizable ovarian wall structure. The defining female characteristics were the formation of protogonial germ tissue into spherical germ cell nests, separation of a tissue layer from the outer epithelial layer of the lobe-forming ovarian walls, a tissue bud growing from the suspensory tissue that helped form the ovary wall, and the proliferation of oogonia and oocytes. Sexual maturation in male striped mullet first occurred at 1 year and 248 mm TL and 100% maturity occurred at age 2 and 300 mm TL. Female striped mullet first matured at 2 years and 291 mm total length and 100% maturity occurred at 400 mm TL and age 4. Because of the open ocean spawning behavior of striped mullet, all stages of maturity were observed in males and females except for functionally mature females with hydrated oocytes. The spawning season for striped mullet recruiting to South Carolina estuaries lasts from October to April; the majority of spawning activity, however, occurs from November to January. Ovarian atresia was observed to have four distinct phases. This study presents morpholog ical analysis of reproductive ontogeny in relation to size and age in South Carolina striped mullet. Because of the length of the undifferentiated gonad stage in juvenile striped mullet, previous studies have proposed the possibility of protandric hermaphrodism in this species. The results of our study indicate that striped mullet are gonochoristic but capable of exhibiting nonfunctional hermaphroditic characteristics in differentiated mature gonads

Effects of Honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) Management on Avian Abundance

Amur honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) is an invasive shrub that is found in many parts of Ohio and grows well in Ohio's forest ecosystems. This study attempted to assess the effect of treating Amur honeysuckle on avian abundance within Germantown MetroPark in Germantown, Ohio. The honeysuckle was chemically treated with a foliar glyphosate spray and left to break down naturally. The birds were grouped into three different guilds: ground nesting species, shrub nesting species, and fruit eating species. In addition to the effects of treatment, the important vegetation characteristics, such as honeysuckle and native shrub densities, percent forb or grass cover on the plots, basal area, and percent canopy cover within in the plots were also measured and compared among treatment courses for each guild. Overall, there was very little effect on treatment on bird abundance within the species guilds, either positively or negatively. There were some differences between the different treatment courses but that was likely due to inherent differences in the plots making up those courses. Vegetation characteristics of plots were more important in determining avian abundance. There is a time gap between honeysuckle treatment and the desired results. How the treatment of invasive species effects native species of birds is important because it can help to preserve threatened species or assist managers in making habitat management decisions.Five Rivers MetroParksNo embargoAcademic Major: Forestry, Fisheries, and Wildlif

Rule-based Logical Forms Extraction

Proceedings of the 16th Nordic Conference of Computational Linguistics NODALIDA-2007. Editors: Joakim Nivre, Heiki-Jaan Kaalep, Kadri Muischnek and Mare Koit. University of Tartu, Tartu, 2007. ISBN 978-9985-4-0513-0 (online) ISBN 978-9985-4-0514-7 (CD-ROM) pp. 402-409

Sump Diving “River Caves”

Note: “Sump” is a term used in caving to describe a passage in a cave that is submerged under water. Sump diving, and “lure of the sump” originated in the UK in the early 1920’s, as did the use of “rebreather’s, and the “self-contained underwater breathing apparatus”, S.C.U.B.A. The techniques developed by cavers, and “sump divers” in Europe, and then used in British cave systems like Wookey Hole set a cave diving precedence; the development of a unique style, and system for diving caves. These diving practices and techniques influenced the exploration of resurgences, springs, siphons, and river caves throughout the world. This long history of bravery, and the unparalleled determination of cave divers continues today, and will certainly continue to shape the future of exploration as we know it