Month: April 2022

Farmers produced them mainly for family consumption. But since market demand increased for these products they got more importance between farmer’s crop choices. The study showed that the most used agricultural practices were crop associations,the mechanical destruction of diseased plants, the installation of banana and plantain plantations in lowlands, crop rotation, the use of composts and manures to fertilize the soil. Many banana and plantain farmers use organic farming practices and their cropping systems are likely to be converted to organic production systems. These good organic farming practices contribute to the sustainability of banana production systems and improve the productivity and profitability of the value chain . This is very relevant and shows the potential of bananas and plantains value chain potential to be converted into organic production with many ecological and social economic opportunities.Results also showed that almost all of the farmers surveyed knew the symptoms of Banana Bunchy Top Disease . Only farmers in the Atlantic and Mono do not know the methods of managing this disease showing that they have not received training on best practices for managing BBTD.

In this study,the identification of symptoms of BBTD is based on direct observations and not modern technologies using aerial images and machine learning methods .Farmers in Oueme and Plateau have received several pieces of training on the management of this disease and some producers still use glyphosate, Sharp 480and Lagon to control it. Raising awareness and training farmers on agroecological methods such as roguing developed in previous studies are essential to better control this disease in bananas. Banana weevil and nematodes are also identified as the major pests of bananas in the study area, but farmers use many agroecological practices for their sustainable management.Other studies showed that the incorporation around the plant base of powdered neem seed or cake at 60 100 g/mat at4-month intervals, gave better control of the banana weevil, Cosmopolites sordidus, and parasitic nematodes, than that achieved with soil application of Furadan 5Gat 60 g/mat at 6-month intervals. Several constraints limit the production of bananas and plantains. The majority of these stresses were the effects of climate change, the premature fall of banana plants due to lack of water and damage from diseases and pests. Climate change,mobile vertical farm diseases and pests weaken the production systems of bananas and plantains. These constraints have been identified in other studies as the main constraints in banana and plantain production . Other constraints such as those of commercialization have been identified.

It’s about the low selling price and access to markets. This study allowed us to understand the banana and plantain production systems and the challenges to be met for an improvement of their value chain. Small-scale farmers stand to gain higher incomes from farming if they diversify their activities and venture into the cultivation of HVCs as opposed to solely relying on staple crops which produce low earnings . HVCs can also improve the ability of small-scale farmers to meet their household food security needs through incomes obtained from participation in local and export markets to purchase food for household consumption. Farmers’ potential to access lucrative markets is hinged on their ability to successfully produce quality products .The Vhembe district has highly favourable agro-ecological conditions for the production of sub-tropical fruits and nuts . Large-scale commercial farmers who are predominantly white have mainly controlled these sectors in the region ;however there has been a more recent drive by government towards the commercialization of these commodities amongst small-scale farmers as a means of addressing rural poverty and unemployment . The local Department of Agriculture recorded 1113 commercially oriented small-scale farmers growing sub-tropical fruit and nuts in the Vhembe district in 2018 cultivating a total land area of 4713 hectares . These farmers are strongly supported by the private sector, specifically commodity associations, that aim to assist small-scale farmers to increase their yields and expand the land area under cultivation.

To meet this increasing demand, there must be an increase in production as well. However, most farmers continue to use manual tools resulting in low productivity in addition to the associated drudgery. This has contributed to stagnation in maize production, raising concern over livelihood security for a considerable section of the population.While there are several factors contributing to the problem of low production of maize in Uganda, heavy reliance on human muscles as the main source of farm power is a major impediment . Agricultural production in Uganda is characterized by low levels of mechanization with only 10% of farmers using some form of mechanization. While the proportion of farmers in Uganda using Animal Draught Technology is relatively higher compared to use of engine power , its use is largely limited to ploughing operations .The lack of appropriate technologies for mechanized farming operations in Uganda continues to be a major challenge to the goal of increasing agricultural production. Majority of farmers are low-income smallholders, unable to afford tractor-powered equipment while most of the available draught animal powered equipments perform a single operation, making DAP and the associated tools relatively expensive as well.

Since modern agricultural equipment which is crucial to improved production is beyond the buying capacity of most smallholder farmers, there is need for low-cost equipment that can handle labor-intensive operations particularly ploughing, planting and weeding so as to increase maize production. A study conducted by concluded that in areas where farmers use DAP equipment,sawtooth greenhouse significant improvements in production can be obtained through the introduction of small-scale farm implements and machines. Similarly,argues that use of animal-drawn tools and equipment can increase yield of agricultural produce significantly and reduce labor demand in farming operations. In this paper,the process of developing and evaluating the performance of an integrated ox-drawn tool that combines a plough, planter and cultivator, for small-scalemaize farmers in Uganda is described. The cultivating unit was designed for inter-row weed control in maize fields with an inter-row spacing of 75 cm. The unit comprised of sweeps, shanks, crossbeam and beam end attachment. These components were designed using standard procedures for design of machine elements. For soil-engaging components,duck-foot sweeps were selected due to availability on the local market and their ability to manipulate soil owing to their large wing width. Arrangement of sweeps was chosen to achieve maximum weeding area between the rows without damaging the crop and was done in accordance with .

Shanks were sized basing on the maximum bending moment they are subjected to in operation which was obtained by considering the shank as a cantilevered beam carrying a point load at the end with sweeps and fixed on the plough beam. The load on sweeps was obtained as the total draft force on soil-engaging components which is the product of sweep cross-section area and unit draft for clay loam soil in friable moisture condition. The cross beam, on which shanks are attached, was designed based on maize inter-row spacingand the maximum shear force and bending moment to ensure strength and rigidity. The cultivator was tested in average plot sizes of 80 by 10 m having maize planted at an inter-row spacing of 75 cm and an intra-row spacing of 30 cm. The cultivator was adjusted to a working depth of 40 mm and hitched to the animals.During field tests, actual operating width and depth of cultivation were measured as well as the operation time and turning time. Two timers were used, one for time spent per each run along a row and the other one for total time taken to carry out the operation.This operation was replicated ten times and data collected was used for calculating the average field capacity and efficiencies.Weeding efficiency was calculated by counting weeds before and after weeding operation, measurements of weed cover, and total area of cultivation were measured. Crop damage was assessed by counting crop plant populations in each row before and after the passage of the cultivator.

According to official projections, around 4 000 producers could be trained every year with the aim of producing quality cocoa with above-average market prices.Indeed, this government incentive is in addition to initiatives already undertaken by some exporters who have for years been engaged in the battle to improve the quality of Cameroonian cocoa, by encouraging the production of a certified cocoa.This is the case of Telcar Cocoa, a local merchant of the American Cargill,which has, during the last four cocoa growing seasons in Cameroon, distributed approximately 1.5 billion CFA francs of premiums to certified cocoa farmers.This can be explained by the phenomenon of liberalization. Indeed, the liberalization of cocoa marketing has had a negative impact on quality.The adoption in1992 of the packaging standards of the French Association of Cocoa Trade, instead of those of the FAO used by the former National Office for the Marketing of Commodities , resulted in the degradation of the quality of the raw products.The factors that may explain this deterioration in the quality of cocoa result in non-respect of the technical itineraries of pre- and post-harvest operations.

These important operations, even when they are carried out, are not always in line with good practice, especially with regard to Phytosanitary treatments, fermentation and drying. The smells of smoke and tar, pesticide residues, and the almost disappearance of grade I are the consequences.The introduction of GIs for Cameroon in the marketing of high-quality specific products could be an effective way to improve product quality, position itself in more profitable niche markets,hydroponic nft and help increase agricultural income and contribute to development. The approach is therefore primarily centered on quality rather than quantity, the latter having to follow once the price premiums achieved. The high demand for high quality coffee and cocoa, particularly United States and the EU appears to be advocating for diversification to high quality products.The approach by the quantity aims contrary to the one developed above, to increase the production, the quality will follow by a domino effect due to the external constraints in particular in the respect of the international standards. This approach focuses on the concept of agricultural productivity. Indeed, the theoretical approach of productivity finds all its meaning in that it is a means of measuring agricultural performance. From the physiocratic theory to the neoclassical theory of distribution, it occupies a place of choice in economic thought.This interest has been at the origin of a remarkable evolution of economic theory and the microeconomic theory of production .

From the physiocratic theories to the neoclassical theory of distribution, the notion of productivity began to be clarified with the work of Quesnay . This pioneering author, himself a landowner, finds that by incurring higher fees, the land is better grown with less labor and gives its owner a larger product. He deduces what will later be called the agricultural surplus theory. At the same time Turgot establishes on the contrary that the land provides decreasing returns as the less fertile land is cultivated. Malthus takes up this argument by referring to the “limited power of production of the earth” in his “Essay on the Principle of Population” in 1798.The English classics introduce the notion of labor productivity, to designate the physical performance of work. Research on the causes of Adam Smith’s wealth of nations in 1976 opens with a first book on “the causes that have perfected the productive faculties of labor”. The agricultural surplus theory establishes above all the role of capital advances in increasing agricultural production,and hence in increasing national income, and then considers agriculture as the sole source of productive wealth of labor as the “quantity of work that the same number of arms can provide” and develops the idea that it can be improved by the “division of labor”. Thus, labor productivity gains resulting from it, benefit the wage-earners by encouraging a fall in the prices of manufactured goods.

The marginalist school operates a complete reversal of the problem, taking advantage of the work of J. B. Say . The latter author thinks that production involves the productive services of three elements: the industry of man,capital, and natural agents. He finds empirically that whoever has one of these elements useful for production may demand remuneration when he gives up his use. It states that productivity remains a size attached to work, since it defines the degree of productivity per quantity produced in exchange for a certain amount of wages and a productivity indicator corresponding to the inverse of a cost. fixed unit rate of production. S. Jevons goes further in the analysis of capital income based on the idea of linking the remuneration of the means of production and their marginal contribution to the production. His successors in the neoclassical school, develop an analysis of the marginal returns of capital and the marginal productivity of labor and make them tools of distribution of total income between the factors of production.

For most of these shocks and risks, food insecurity has been perceived mainly in terms of food crop availability and accessibility. The role of livestock, which touches upon the livelihoods of approximately60 percent of the people in Southern Africa, is not fully appreciated. This neglect of the role livestock plays is partly due to lack of solid empirical evidence on the actual contribution livestock make to livelihoods and the survival strategies that are employed during times of shocks. Understanding the role of livestock in more specific terms could facilitate development of informed policy and other intervention strategies aimed at further strengthening the livestock-based livelihood systems. In Zambia, this knowledge is especially critical in livestock-based livelihood systems of Southern Province, where droughts and seasonal hunger are frequent and, often,rural people have to turn to their livestock as a coping strategy. Of the country’s 10 provinces, Southern Province also stands out as one with the largest and most diversified smallholder livestock sub-sector.

Unfortunately,there is a glaring dearth of empirical evidence on the underlying livelihood systems and the position of livestock in the hierarchy of livelihood activities. Elsewhere, studies have shown that livestock could impact nutritional status, income and rural poverty.The study presented in this paper represents one of the first comprehensive mixed-methods treatments of the role of livestock as a source of livelihood and income, and in risk management against shocks. This study will assist policy makers and stakeholders in mainstreaming livestock intervention strategies in Zambia by understanding the livelihood systems and defining the role that livestock plays among livestock-owning smallholder households. In the remainder of the paper, we first present the methods and procedures used in Section two, followed by results and discussions in Section three. Summary and conclusion are presented in Section four. Within each wealth stratum, focus groups were convened,ebb and flow tray each comprising a random sample of 8 – 10 individuals.In addition to being a powerful tool for collecting data that is enriched by purposeful use of interaction, Focus Group Discussions also offer considerable advantages in terms of cost per informant.The number of participants per FGD was determined in conformity with recommendations of some sections of the literature.

Similarly, the number of FGDs per district was arrived at taking recommendations in the literature into account. Reference,for example, suggests an optimal number of FGDs of 4 – 12 while contends that data generated after about 10 FGDs are likely to be largely redundant.During the focus group discussions a number of standard participatory tools were used to identify the issues and livelihood activities, and to determine the relative importance of the identified alternatives. These included tools such as participatory scoring and pair-wise ranking. Relative importance and seasonality of livelihood and income-generating activities were derived by using analytical calendars with scoring. Analytical calendars are matrices with each row representing a competing activity and each column representing the month. The activities in the analytical calendar are arrived at by the communities through a participatory process. Once this is done, two types of scoring are then undertaken. Vertical scoring, usually by distributing a fixed number of grains, is done to determine the relative importance of each competing activity, overall and without taking seasonality into account. The more the grains assigned to the activity the more important the community considers the activity to be. The second type of scoring involves, for each activity, distributing the grains across the 12months of the year.

During seasonality analysis, the horizontal scores are weighted by the relative importance of the activity/row as determined by the vertical scores. That is, the weight for each row entry is equal to the vertical score presented as a percentage of the total number of grains . Unlike the un weighted seasonality scores, the weighted seasonality scores can be compared not only within activity but also across the activities. During the community mapping and after all the households in the community had been identified, a very short questionnaire or listing form was administered to each of the identified households. A total of 309 households were listed and interviewed across all the communities in the three districts. While this information was important in its own right, the resultant list with wealth strata was also used as a sampling frame from which households were randomly selected for in-depth interviews. Using a semi-structured questionnaire, each in-depth household interview deciphered basic socio-economic characteristics and livelihood activities of each household.Care was taken to ensure representation of each of the wealth strata in these household case studies.

Hence, low to intermediate levels of intensification may induce less habitat loss maintaining biodiversity at both farmlands and natural remnants, as well as maintain matrix permeability functionally connecting population inhabiting the habitat patches .Furthermore, to give a general idea of how these land-use dynamics may affect ecosystems services provision on the agricultural lands Figure 3 is the schematic representation of landscapes C, D, C’ and D’. “Natural habitat’ support adjacent agricultural areas with ecosystems services. Population numbers of ecosystems providing species is represented as animal figure sizes. lso, at intermediate levels of agriculture intensification, the matrix may act as a population source by serving as a feeding and reproductive site. Because permeability of intensive farming is low in C and D landscapes, natural capital may be only provided nearby the natural habitat border.Further, most species may not reproduce in the intensive matrixes although they might reproduce in non-intensive ones.

Finally, D landscapes may suffer from loss of ecosystem services due to the reduction of the populations inhabiting small habitat fragments coped with intensification of farm lands.On the other hand, intermediate levels of agriculture intensification in the matrix and yet maintaining significant amount of natural habitat may provide agricultural fields with ecosystems services.Because species importance is associated with their abundance, many groups that promote these ecosystems services my follow convex patterns in density and intensification relationship and thus may maintain large populations in intermediate levels of agriculture intensification . This review shows that the main premise of LSP—namely that increasing yield will reduce further habitat loss—is not supported either by theoretical or empirical data. Furthermore, flood and drain table a LSP business-as-usual strategy is predicted to increase habitat loss. Although it is clear that potential and realized yield gap should be narrowed,many countries have decreased hunger by investing on food access, sanitation education, health and so on through local and country scale food policies. Many of the studies have compared biodiversity and agricultural production under “intensive vs. non-intensive” management and “natural habitats”.

These studies assume that,depending on the species richness/abundance and yield shape, either LSP or LSH strategies will be more effective.Beyond the well-known concave and convex patterns, also U-shaped and null models are also possible.Furthermore, species responses alone are not sufficient to compare LSP and LSH efficiency, as the relationship between agriculture output, farm expansion/retraction and habitat loss is of ultimate importance. As intensification generally leads to increase habitat loss, even if species respond on a convex fashion, habitat loss and intensification may lead to population declines at both farmed and un-farmed portions, suggesting the low or even negative biological consequences of LSP management.Our theoretical model shows that the risks of Jevons Paradox in the yield-forest loss relationship to biodiversity and ecosystems services provision are multiple. Increasing intensification of farmlands: 1) increases natural habitat loss declining population inhabiting these small habitat patches especially in regions with less than 30%of habitat cover; 2) leads to population declines for species inhabiting the anthropogenic matrix ; 3) decreases permeability of the natural habitat dwelling species that are either crossing the matrix in dispersal movements or as a daily home range movement supplementing habitat.The situation is even worrisome in landscapes where “natural habitat” cover is lower than 30%, such as many biodiversity host spots . In such places, conservation strategies that support agricultural intensification may be a shoot on biodiversity’s feet and yet may not guarantee food security.

Both sparing and sharing assumes complex causal chains that involve biophysical, ecological and cultural world that transcends several scientific disciplines and many issues are still to be addressed . Yet, LSP practices may deeply impact biodiversity, ecosystems services, food security and social wellbeing leading to a no-win scenario, although, local and small scale LSP may work in specific situations. Therefore, by and large, LSH is a safer strategy from ecological and social aspects. This review shows that responses are very context-specific given the biological, land-use and societal issues. Pesticides are the substances or mixtures of substances that are used intentionally in order to control or destroy unwanted forms of life or organisms with the aim of protecting crops and plants . Using pesticides in agricultural production is one of the most important measures to help limit the reduction of agricultural output due to pests and diseases, helping to create a large amount of agricultural products at reasonable prices year round, meeting the growing needs of people around the world.

Network communication is the combination of communication and computer technology. Network communication enables to collect,store, process and transmit data in the form of pictures and texts so that information resources can be fully shared.The above technologies have been applied into automatic pig feeding systems , farming environment monitoring , pig disease monitoring, etc.Sunproposed a pig excretion behavior automatic monitoring method based on motion characteristics. This method features a pig tracking model characterized by the position of the center of mass of the moving target and the ratio of the minimum circumscribed rectangle length to diameter. Mackenzie used industry data, multiple impact indicators, and system uncertainty to investigate and quantify the environmental impact of commercial pig farming in Canada for the first time. He proposed a method to determine the environmental impact of modeling pig farming. The model likely assesses whether future changes in Canadian pig production systems could significantly reduce the environmental burden of these systems.Parsons used visual image analysis to control the food quantity and pig weight, and recorded feed intake per pig per day for pig growth and pollutant discharge. Costard analyzed data from 709 pig farms and proposed adjustments to livestock practices and control measures of pig farms in Madagascar using multi-factor analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis .Although there are many research and practical efforts made on promoting pig farming industry, smart pig farming is still in its infancy stage. This paper reviews these enabling technologies of NGAI, Industrial Internet, Internet of things and cloud computing, vertical grow table and revisits the requirements for developing an intelligent pig farming system with the definition of IIP4MPF platform as follows. The IIP4MPF takes business integration platform as the carrier with the service provisions of Internet of things data management and control, vehicle logistics management, RFID middle ware, electronic tags and other software and hardware support in the terms of farm, laboratory, vehicle and management office.The platform consists of services of a unified digital pig farming portal,farming management, disease surveillance, breeding management system, intelligent service management. The platform implements the digitalization of breeding elements and the digital management of breeding process so that it improves the efficiency and profitability of pig farming. The farming mode is shifted from industrialization to digitalization and intelligentization with the development of new generation information and communication technology.There is an urgent need to develop a general digital pig farming platform,realize the automatical control of farming environment, intelligent pig breeding, and improve the intelligent pig farming and online services. There are three core functional modules for the IIP4MPF platform. The first module is for digital farming data collection, integration and sharing; second module for unified farming data processing; third module for digital data management for a company. The platform allows the information interaction between different departments in a pig farm, provides key business application systems, laboratory software and decision-making systems. It is an efficient platform for the management of farms, laboratories, vehicles and officers.With the integration of computer, spatial information, network communication and electronic engineering, the platform aims to realize the digitalization of pig farming elements such as biological, environmental, technical, social and economic elements, farming process and management. It also aims to realize digital farm design, farming visualization and intelligent system control and finally reduce cost and increase pig farming efficiency. The Application Layer supports user access to multiple businesses, and provides different access permissions for different types of users. The PAAS provides applications with a variety of public and common services which are encapsulated in a certain form into independent modules.Through the PAAS, each application system only needs to focus on its own core businesses while ignoring irrelative business functions. The DAAS manages and provides a shared database while integrating multi-source and heterogeneous data involved in pig farming. The DAAS enables to configure a specific database dedicated to a special application and performs unified database management through metadata and information resource directories.Information System Layer: This layer integrates varied organizational systems and facilitates error-free transactions and production, supporting a variety of business functions such as ERP, traceability, and lab management system, WMS, OA system, etc.Facilities Layer: This layer provides basic hardware and software for pig farming. The facilities mainly includes infrastructure, monitoring/management hardware, computing and storage equipment, networking and communication devices, software such as operating systems, middleware servers and system software.

Additional tests done in relation to seed spacing were the average seed missing index ,multiple index and quality of feed index. The results for those tests were as follows: 3% average seed missing index, 0% seed multiple index, 4% quality of feeding index which indicates that the planter has 97% precision in terms of seed spacing. This result could be due to the seeds metering device housing and seed tube which are the major source of inaccuracy in seed spacing. The cultivating unit was tested in the field at an average operating speed of 3.5km/h. Results indicated that the cultivator mean working width was 43 cm, the mean weeding depth was 3.5 cm while the cultivator mean weeding efficiency was 79.1%. These results are comparable to those obtained by other researchers who did similar work but in different environments and contexts such as . The effective field capacity averaged 0.1 ha/h with minimum and maximum of 0.09 ha/h and 1.12 ha/h, respectively. This indicates that it requires about 10 hours to weed one hectare of a maize field as opposed to 80 man–hours required when done manually as reported by and.Therefore, weeding using the developed cultivator can reduce time and labor requirements in farms.

Reference valuated fivetined and threetined animal drawn cultivators and found their effective field capacity to be 0.08 ha/h and 0.05 ha/h, respectively.Hence this new developed cultivator is more efficient than both five- and threetined cultivator developed by . This study has demonstrated that it is technically feasible to integrate planting and cultivation units onto an existing mould board plough beam to develop an integrated tool suitable for use in small-scale maize farming. This approach to development of farm tools has potential to reduce ownership costs of equipment which may contribute their increased adoption. This would be in line with current strategies for agricultural transformation in Africa whereby mechanization has been identified among the critical inputs needed to reduce extreme drudgery while improving productivity and production. Results of performance testing for the prototype indicate that its level of efficiency, effectiveness and reliability for planting and weeding operations is superior to manual operations currently used by small-scale farmers in the county and is comparable to similar but single-unit proto types developed in other parts of the world.

This demonstrates that the prototype has potential to transform mechanization on smallholder farms which in turn can result in improved productivity and production on such farms. This would lead to improved food security and reduction in drudgery associated with hand tools thereby making agricultural work more decent.It is recommended to make further improvement on the prototype prior to adoption especially perfecting the seed metering devices to reduce seed damage and to develop supplementary metering devices such that the planter can be used as a multi-crop planter to sow other crops like soy beans and groundnut. In addition, an economic and ergonomic evaluation for the new developed prototype needs to assess suitability. Further, more rigorous testing in farmers’ fields with different soil types and conditions should be carried out to generalize field performance of the prototype.Recent world production of fresh tomato fruits was 165 million tons with a value of about 60 billion US dollars in 2013 .Tomato fruits contain protein, fat, carbohydrate, minerals , carotene, thiamine, nicotinic acid, riboflavin, and ascorbicacid . Tomato is also an important source for vitamins A and C, carotenoids,and lycopene . Carotenoids are useful against breast cancer and prostate cancer . Tomato is ranked among the top five vegetables in terms of antioxidant activity .Tomatoes are cultivated mainly by conventional methods using chemical fertilizers and agrochemicals. A recent report showed that only 1% of agricultural fields in the world are cultivated under organic farming systems. Although the yield is relatively stable in conventional farming systems, excessive use of chemical fertilizers and agrochemicals can cause severe environmental, socio-economic, and human health problems.

As a result, consumer awareness towards organic foods has been increasing recently.Organic cultivation methods cause relatively lower environmental damage if compared with conventional farming and the organic crop product is considered tasty and healthy.Studies on tomato have also shown that antioxidants, flavonoids,sugar, and vitamin C are generally higher in organically grown fruits than conventionally grown fruits . However, the yield is more unstable and/or lower in organic farming systems than conventional systems. Therefore, an alternative organic agricultural system is required to ensure high yield and quality of agricultural products. In addition, the cultivation method must be efficient, reliable, reproducible, and simple.Soil microorganisms play several beneficial roles such as decomposing organic materials, releasing nutrients to plants, and bioremediation of pesticide polluted soils.Therefore, soil microorganisms are considered key players in maintaining soil fertility. A large and active microorganism community is needed for efficient nutrient cycling and steady supply of nutrients to the plants.

Recent years witnessed substantial growth in sales of US organic food .The annual growth rate of organic food sales between 1990 and 2017 reached a double digit ranged from 12% to 21%, far outpaced the growth of products conventionally produced . In 2106, the total sales of organic products had grown to $47 billion .The fast-expanding US organic market was partially attributed to the strongdem and due to an increasing number of consumers’ preference for buying and consuming organic foods. The niche market had embraced as high as 69% of US consumers and they were willing to pay the premium prices for organic products.The driving forces behind include growing concerns about health, valuing food safety, environmental shepherd, and animal welfare.The conversion to organic foods was particularly significant in consumers’ favor for organic produce.While the solid demand for organic products unfolded in both domestic and international food markets, the supply side revealed a relatively stagnant growth within the United States.

Overall, organic production has not kept pace with the growth in demand, organic farms are struggling, and organic handlers are challenged for procuring enough. At the very upstream of supply chain, organic farming remains a tiny share, accounting for about 0.55% of the total US farm land .The shortage of supply along the organic chain has been much in evidence for years in the United States. When it comes to the major barriers, studies point to low yields, higher costs, unstable product quality, the cost of certification, price premiums, imports, limited organic inputs, and the lopsided competitions.Some others render explanations with focuses on psychological and sociological costs,on uncertain legislative environment , on security of marketing channels, on input constraints , and the perceptions of farmers . While the varieties of investigations did cover a broad area, the results are mixed. The lack of consensus regarding the influential factors and their impact on organic conversion calls for more quantitative analyses based on good survey data, and some studies based on econometric models step forward to quantitatively address the choice of farmers on the conversion to organic production and reached conclusions that related organic farming to the age and gender of operators, farming acreages, levels of education, and urban-raised farmers, which did not fully resonate with some early analyses, but provided a more informative vision.

Despite the progress, a closer look at the limited studies finds a problem of small sample size, which is linked to problematic estimates of impacts in spite of their significance in statistics. This is a well-recognized issue to many, but has a tendency to repeat itself due to the predicament in organizing interviews and collecting data. Consequently, conflicts remain even in this category of studies. The situation merits more studies with the well-designed survey instruments and relatively large samples to ensure more accurate and consistent estimates of the impacts of influential factors in the small-farmers’ decision-making on the conversion to organic production.This study has its focus on the choice of small farmers in the conversion to organic production and is aimed to identify the factors of the influence and valid ate their impacts on farmers’ decision on the conversion to organic production.Based on a large survey data in the Southern region of the United States,the authors examined farmer’s attitude, perception, farms characteristics, features of the local community, social demographic factors, and so forth. The results supplemented some conclusions of early studies and offered a deeper understanding of choices of farmers in the conversion to organic farming in the United States.

A broad survey and econometric modeling featured this study make the analysis ready to the empirical application and bring about the important implications for understanding the complex organic conversion process and for making workable and effective polices to support the small farms in the United States. The data used in this study came from a broad interview with small farmers in Southern region of USA in 2014. The information collected covered organic practices adopted, societal and demographics of operators; characteristics of farms; farmers’ beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions related to organic farming practices, and so forth. A large sample of farmers from a population of total 4818 farms in Georgia were randomly selected and interviewed. The instruments used in the interview were designed by faculty members of Fort Valley State University and the field work of the survey was administered by the Burruss Institute of Kenne saw State University. Farmers who respond to the screening question, “Do you produce fruits and vegetables?” with a “yes” were retained in the sample.About 2404 farmers were contacted, with 456 farmers going through the survey, which gave a return rate of 18.9%.

The latter only take into consideration certain outputs that can be measured in monetary terms, overlooking those outcomes that cannot be measured and valued by the market and,thus, considered “externalities”.If forms of capital that include clean air, clean water and jobs are valued as zero within a traditional accounting framework, a decision based on this information is unlikely to consider them important capital to be maintained. As such,traditional financial accounting does not provide accurate information to stakeholders,consumers, citizens or policy makers on their choices in relation to food production and consumption. Sustainability accounting, with its more holistic approach, could help to achieve a shift not only in production patterns but also in consumption habits and in a social awareness of the value of natural resources,all essential factors in the fight to reduce the environmental impact of food production.In this research we only consider GHG emissions and energy consumption.

We do not analyse other environmental impacts associated with industrial farming practices, such as water quality, loss of biodiversity and the negative impact on health, to name but a few. A further limitation is that we consider energy consumption and emission levels only as far as the end of crop production.We do not analyse subsequent stages, most notably that of transportation. To be able to identify further implications and draw additional inferences, we would need to perform similar analyses with larger samples, including farms from different countries, producing a range of different crops and over a longer time period so as to analyse the evolution of this relationship in the long term.Although the findings reported here refer specifically to rice crops, we believe that our results can be extended to other crops produced under similar conditions of industrial farming, where an increase in productivity is achieved by employing practices that do not contemplate the harm they inflict on the environment.Clearly, more research is needed on other agricultural crops. Likewise, it would be interesting in future research to include not only negative but also the positive externalities of paddy fields such as water filtering and the substitution of wetlands.

Most consumers in developed countries are convinced about the higher quality of organically grown fruits and vegetables. It is generally believed that organic food is healthier than the one produced in a conventional way. This perception emerged from the general opinion that organic food was more nutritious, had more vitamins and did not contain pesticide and fertilizer residues. It is often true that there are many advantages of organic food which is clearly presented in the review article based on a meta-analysis performed by Barański and coworkers. Many studies demonstrated that organic crops do not contain pesticide residues or have an insignificant amount of them. It is also shown that fruits and vegetables produced organically usually have more vitamin C andβ-carotene. Furthermore, several studies report that organic food has a better flavor and higher organoleptic qualities. However, there is still a lack of conclusive data that can confirm the superiority of organic crops over conventional ones in the context of nutritional values. Are organic vegetables really more nutritious and do they have a higher level of macro and micro elements?

Some authors reported that vegetables grown in an organic way did not differ in the concentration of nutrients or the difference was insignificant.Moreover, some authors suggest that the organic crops might be the source of the microbiological contamination due to the use of organic fertilizers which are commonly applied in this farming system .Although the subject of organic vs. conventional farming has been present in the public debates for a long time, it is still raising many controversies, particularly among consumers who demand the right to know the quality of food products. However, there is still a lack of consistent and unambiguous studies that can confirm the superiority of one growing system over another. Taking into account that the final chemical composition of the crop is strongly influenced by external factors such as physicochemical properties of the soil, climate conditions,plant varieties, and type of applied fertilizers, it makes it extremely difficult to compare the data from different studies. In order to clearly demonstrate the differences in the quality of agricultural products of both types of farming systems detailed, ideally, long-term and very reliable research is required.The main goal of this study is to evaluate the differences in the concentration of major macro nutrients such as Ca, Mg, N, Na, K, and P in the commonly consumed vegetables grown in organic and conventional ways. Additionally, the concentration of macro elements was assessed in the soils of both growing systems.

The main sources of anthropogenic global warming, in order of importance, have been identified as electricity generation, land-use changes, agriculture and transport . In the fight to reduce the greenhouse gases attributable to these human activities the development of accurate systems of measurement of these emissions has acquired great importance.In the field of accounting there have been abundant attempts to measure and value the impact of human activity on climate change. For example, sustainability accounting aims to provide stakeholders with a set of tools for addressing environmental,social and economic concerns ; full cost accounting seeks to capture more fully the social and environmental consequences of economic activities; and, carbon accounting provides procedures for calculating the amount of carbon emitted by different sources or the amount stored .However, evaluating the impact of human activities on climate change represents a considerable challenge in accounting given the absence of a globally accepted scheme capable of measuring systematically the interconnection between nature and economics.

In the traditional accounting framework the environmental impacts of human activities are considered as “externalities” , their exclusion resulting in biased information. The expenses recorded in financial databases appear too low as some costs are passed on to external parties, and so artificially low costs and prices are disclosed .In short, measuring greenhouse gases attributable to human activities is a way of reducing human impact on climate change. But emissions and other environmental impacts are still given no consideration in traditional accounting and,therefore, any related costs are valued at zero in traditional financial statements.One way of demonstrating that zero is not the right value for externalities is to analyse how they interrelate with economic performance. Despite considerable advances over the last twenty years in integrating economics and environmental issues, the valuation and association between their respective performances remainin conclusive .For instance, some authors report a positive influence of a firm’s environmental performance on its financial performance,claiming that a sustained improvement in environmental performance enhances financial outcomes.By contrast, others report just the opposite, with a better financial performance being associated with a poorer environmental record.

Finally, a third group of researchers argues that no clear pattern emerges in the relationship between economic and environmental performance.These differences can be attributed to at least three reasons. First, the field lacks, as discussed above, a globally accepted system for measuring the environmental impact of human activities, with previous research relying heavily on firms’ financial data and failing to provide a true account of the economic impact of the environmental externalities of their activities.Second, these studies have applied an array of different measures of environmental performance that are prone to give a variety of results and conclusions.Additionally, most use proxies of environmental impact rather than a specific measure. For example, Henri and Journeault built indicators from firms’ survey responses while Déjean and Martinez and Jacobs et al .  constructed them from firms’voluntary disclosures, the weakness being that these disclosure are typically made so as to influence stakeholders via biased, rather than reliable, information.Wahba,on the other hand, considered compliance with ISO 14000 or ISO 14001  as a proxy for good environmental performance; however, obtaining these certificates does not necessarily reflect the firms’ true environmental impact rather they serve only as an indication that they adhere to certain rules of eco-efficiency. Third, the conducting of studies at the macroeconomic scale involves a high level of complexity since while environmental impacts are barely comparable at the interregional level they are even less so at that of macroeconomic blocks. Moreover, macroeconomic databases are prone to miss regional ecological differences that might be significant in the evaluation of environmental impact and they also tend to aggregate firms from different sectors, thus resulting in heterogeneous samples.

The contribution of this study is to analyse the incidence of anthropogenic climate changes on economic performance by adopting a different approach to those taken by previous studies. Thus, the paper takes a microeconomic approach,drawing on a homogeneous sample of rice farms, and evaluating environmental performance by applying measures of actual environmental impacts,focusing not only on the externalities resulting from the firm’s immediate productive stage, but also those arising in the earlier productive stages of the inputs required by the farm. Additionally, we use a widely accepted methodology for measuring a firm’s environmental impact.Conventional farming is concerned above all with achieving short-term economic targets with the use of environmentally aggressive inputs across the whole agribusiness cycle to enhance economic performance.