Category: hydroponic agriculture

Additional in-dices, which address some of the critical aspects of agro- ecological health and vulnerability to disasters, need attention . They include; 1) Environment Vulnerability Index : It is natural disaster threats to farming activity aggravated by the anthropogenic degradative factors. EVI use vulnerability definition in terms of degree of resilience to various hazards/damaging indicators. Pooled weights will pro-vide insight on the vulnerability and suggest measures to enhance resilient mechanisms both for natural and man-made hazards ; 2) Agro-ecosystem Health Index : It includes the evaluation of the land resources, water resources, air quality, functional species richness and gene pools in an agricultural landscape ; 3) Agro-ecology Capital Index : It can include the natural resource capital, traditional knowledge/skills capital at farm level, marketable goods/services capital. In this case, the total asset capital linked to bio-banking process may be assumed positive when the resource payments are re-invested to ensure that capital stock will never decline .

It can include certain incentive me- chanism to bring in required positive change in conservation of agro-biodiversity. It must consider the asset value in terms of uniqueness of functional richness of diversity, rarity, traditional varieties and threatened species conservation efforts across the farms enabling better contested ranking to assign incentives . However, it must have internalized EVI to assess the resilience factor; iv) Environmentally adjusted net Resources Index : Similar to System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting ,grow table hydroponic must consider all natural re-sources to assess the net resource capital  depreciation due to ex-traction of economic resources and subtraction of the adjusted environmental pressures and destruction forces. Ecological indicators are useful to understand the magnitude of change, amount of exposure to change or degree of response to the exposure . Scientific methods defining comparability, weighting and aggregation are pre-requisites for construction of meaningful sustainability indices. Generic models, which facilitate data inputting and sharing across the disciplines, serve the scientific community to integrate the analyses across the locations . In most of the cases, model based outputs will have limitations when analyzed at the scale of effects-means, where as one can conceive an experimental approach to validate the effect-means based indicators, which are inherently subjective.

Currently used sustain-ability indices in terms of means and effects appear to be arbitrary and lack robust scientific basis to arrive at threshold values . However, the threshold values are not acceptable because of interactive nature of physical and biological factors .Some argue that good indicators should be user derived as well as policy relevant and highly aggregated . However, aggregation methods do not facilitate decision-making due to the ambiguity of single index arising out of various dimensions of sustainability definitive indicators with defined objective and absolute comparable values act as useful tool in construction and operationalization at farm level sustainability analysis. Certain criterion and indicators applicable for establishing the sustainability indicators at farm level are presented in Table 3. Applicability of sustainability principles to landscape scale has significant potential for buffering the off-site consequences of agriculture at regional, watershed and farm level to take advantage of services provided by contiguous natural, semi-natural and restored ecosystems. These contiguous systems provide suitable habitat for pollinators, predators and parasites contributing for better productivity of cropland in a landscape.

Thus, landscape approach must consider overall maintenance of ecosystem services provided by agro-ecology, which can be evaluated on the scale of sustainability indices. Although many indicator-based sustainability monitoring tools have been developed in the last decade but considerably less effort has been made to validate their applicability . Last decade has seen increasing need to address the agricultural developmental issues from the perspective that incorporates social and ecological dimensions. Participatory action research holds the key and has relevance to raise the queries on the intuitive wisdom of stakeholders on sustainable agro-ecological practices . PAR is an adaptive social research through the integration of scientific basis to improve the overall management approach by the stakeholders. Unlike the extension activities, the close interactions in PAR promote broad participation in the research process and supports action leading to satisfying situation. Moreover, it reliably addresses the integral question of linking the eco-logical conservation initiatives as part of the socio-economic development at local scale.

Farmers have very limited knowledge on pollination and pollinators; they often take pollinators for granted. Most farmers said “these insects are just there, they are part of creation and nature but they do not need to do something to protect them because these insects will always be there”. Farmers said they did not need to care about these small in-sects seen visiting coffee flowers, because they think these small insects are just there resting but they are not harmful neither beneficial to coffee flowers. Most farmers believed that the presence or absence of these insects on coffee flowers does not stop coffee to set fruit. Also farmers believe that coffee fruit set depends largely on shade, fertility and moisture levels and on control of pests and diseases. Farmers who sprayed herbicides to control weeds did not believe that herbicides had negative impact on bees. Previous studies highlighted the fact that small scale farmers growing coffee with a moderated plant density used on average 3 to 10 liters of herbicides ha/year .

This amount is a high compared to what is recommended and it is index to predict at which level pollinators are exposed to herbicides in central Uganda, particularly in regions where farmers are interested in using herbicides to control weeds instead of hand weeding . The reason for which some farmers preferred using herbicide that hand- hoe weeding were not known but probably this could be attributed to the type of extension services they receive . The major contingent of coffee flower pollinators be-longed to the Apoidea group. Other prominent floral visitors comprise species of Diptera, Lepidoptera and Coleoptera. Neither the dependent nor the famous floral visitors are well known by small-scale coffee growers. In fact, mobile vertical rack coffee is reliant to wild bees but farmers are not aware of the role played by these wild bees. Similarly, butterflies are observed flying within coffee trees but farmers believe they are doing nothing to coffee flowers. In fact respondents indicated that honeybee was a frequent visitor of coffee; they were also able to identify and recognize butterflies as vagrant species in the field; however, no farmer could identify how beneficial butterflies may be for coffee in central Uganda. In contrast, farmers know some butterfly species as pests of some crop species like Ipomoea batatus.

This finding suggest that efforts should be but in place by extension services to educate small-scale farmers to appreciate and know different pollinating agents of their important crops like coffee. Extension services should work hard to increase appreciation of the beneficial aspects of some on-farm based animals like butterflies to increase the involvement and commitment of farmers in the conservation of on-farm biodiversity for livelihood improvements in rural areas. Farmers were also not aware that stingless bees played significant role for coffee to produce higher and quality yields. The only bee species that was recognized by farmers was honeybee although majority of farmers perceived that honeybees were just there but their presence or absence could not influence coffee fruit set. Some farmers believed that honeybees collect nectar from coffee but they are not involved in coffee reproduction process. Field observations and surveys indicated that the overall basic knowledge by farmers of eusocial bees that occur in coffee fields was mainly related to their continued utilization for honey  and other hive products. Cultural value plays a significant role in folk knowledge of Apoidea communities by farmers. For example, in Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Ghana, Kenya, etc farmers know different bee species in the Meliponini group .

They also know nesting sites of different meliponini bees. Some have developed advanced traditional methods for rearing these species for the production of honey. Hence, meliponi-culture  as a lucrative activity for farmers need to be promoted worldwide based on indigenous knowledge of local communities not only for providing income from sale of hive products  but also as a reliable source of pollination of crops such as coffee, particularly in over-cultivated regions where nesting sites have been degraded in disfavor of establishment of wild ground nesting bee communities that are important crop pollinators in the tropics. Knowledge of pollination is expected from most farmers of central Uganda. However, it seems that the knowledge does not depend on the level of education and more particularly on the age. Central Uganda is in-habited by people of “Baganda” ethnic group. In Uganda, the level of knowledge of pollination seems to be associated with the tribe and the agro-ecological zone.

In The Farm That Won’t Wear Out, Hopkins concluded that: “the intelligent improvement of his soil, in systems of permanent agriculture, is the most profitable business in which the farmer and land owner can engage” . Each of Hopkins’ three books found publishers in their day, but not since, and his three works are now all but forgotten a common fate of agriculture books written a century ago. Having quit the USDA, King embarked on an eight month oriental agricultural tour. He arrived in Yokohama in February 1909 and toured extensively in China, Japan, and, to a much lesser extent, Korea . King died with the book incomplete—it lacks the final chapter and hence his conclusions. In the Introduction to his book, King explains his project: “We had long desired to stand face to face with Chinese and Japanese farmers; to walk through their fields and to learn by seeing some of their methods, appliances and practices which centuries of stress and experience have led these oldest farmers in the world to adopt. We desired to learn how it is possible, after twenty and perhaps thirty or even forty centuries, for their soils to be made to produce sufficiently for the maintenance of such dense populations.

We were instructed, surprised and amazed at the conditions and practices which confronted us whichever way we turned; instructed in the ways and extent to which these nations for centuries have been conserving and utilizing their natural resources” . King foresaw a world movement for agricultural re-form: “China, Korea and Japan long ago struck the key-note of permanent agriculture, but the time has now come when they can and will make great improvements, and it remains for us and other nations to profit by their experience,dutch buckets for sale to adopt and adapt what is good in their practice and help in a world movement for the introduction of new and improved methods” . The publishing history of Farmers of Forty Centuries has been uneven, but it is now enjoying a ‘golden era’. In the decade just passed, sixteen separate publishers offered editions of King’s book. This new proliferation has coincided with technological advances and opportunities including the development of print on demand  technologies for book production, faster scanners, opportunities for short run publishing, online international bookshops, for example Amazon.com, and developing opportunities for order taking and fulfilment, all facilitated by the lapse of copyright and by the growing interest in organic agriculture.

With the proliferation of Farmers of Forty Centuries Although the book Farmers of Forty Centuries continues to gain currency, its defining meme, ‘permanent agriculture’, has gained little traction. The 1929 book Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture is a rare ex-ample which has, since King and Hopkins, used the term as a defining element of its narrative. ‘Permanent agriculture’ was appropriated and contracted to generate the neologism ‘permaculture’ which appeared in the 1978 Tasmanian book of Mollison & Holmgren: Permaculture 1: A perennial agriculture system for human settlements . The contraction is confirmed in the title of the second volume: Permaculture Two: Practical design for town and country in permanent agriculture . in digital and print formats, its future now seems secure. The ‘rescue’ of the book by the London publisher Jonathan Cape in 1927 was a resurrection for the book which was, by then, all but forgotten. The consensus of endorsement of the book by the early organic agriculture pioneers was itself an endorsement of the decision by Jonathan Cape to republish, and it was the London editions that they referenced, rather than the original. Firstly was the timing. King’s championing of soil husbandry was contemporaneous with the development of synthetic fertilizer technology by Haber and Bosch . King’s book preceded the chemical industry’s development of synthetic pesticides, and the US seizure of German chemical patents.

At the same time, “considering high interest rate for bank deposits, the average normative land’s price in Ukraine in present-day conditions is nearly 10 times lower than its real cost”. That is, the present-day price of arable land is $3810/ha. Having considered that the value of 1 ha perennial crop lands is three times higher, and natural forage nearly two times lower than the arable land price, we’ll get the normative starting price for the potential of all agricultural lands in the country to be $159.3 milliard. Here we must remember that we speak about the so-called capitalized estimation of the potential of agricultural lands. With Ukrainian economics’ average normative coefficient of capital investments’ efficiency of 0.15, the value of land potential in this country in yearly proportion will amount to $23.9 milliard. It should be noted that in 1990s we performed calculations of the value of the country’s starting nature-re- source potential in USD equivalent and found the annual average potential of the country’s agricultural lands to be $24.18 milliard. And, as it is evident today, the land price according to I.R. Yukhnovskyy and G.M. Loboda practically coincides with our findings.

In this case, the scale of comparability of the potential of the country’s most important nature resource seems to be very important, since it is the one that allows for application of corresponding conversion coefficients so that we could transform Ukrainian NRP value in nature re- source prices of 1990s into the same of present day nature use development. We believe that the USD/UAH exchange rate of 1:6.3 could become the coefficient that would help converse nature resource cadastre prices of 1990s into those of present day. Thus,dutch buckets system the nature resource potential of Ukraine in yearly proportion and at the pre- sent-day level of prices for nature resources amounts to UAH338.39 milliard.Lands are the major natural productive force in the Carpathian Ukraine, too, though the region features significant territorial differences conditioned by specificity of orographic composition, bifurcated hydro-net and reforestation of the territory. Besides, demographic factor, namely, high population density and small contour of productive lands are also of consider- able effect. This is why land resources in the Zakarpattia and the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblasts miss their headship.It was preceded by comparatively big collective and state- owned economies which enjoyed all advantages of huge formations. Hypothetically, broad-scale farming in Ukraine would be possible and appropriate if potential farmers and the state had sufficient finances to develop both farming enterprises of rational size and adequate market environment.

Farmer-entrepreneur’s formation also takes time. Twenty years of farming in Ukraine are now evidence of a kind of inheritance of farming business. Pre- sent-day state of farming in Ukraine is shown in Table 2. It is agricultural production that is differentiated by territorial diversity of nature-resource potential most essentially, said differentiation conditioning natural productivity of agricultural activity. Nature-resource potential effects upon agricultural production with its whole totality, though the influence of land and water resources is the most fundamental. The Carpathian Region of Ukraine is sufficiently provided with water resources and its hydro-net is rather dense allowing farmers enjoy water stock in full arranging fish farms and irrigating arable crops. Orographic peculiarities of the region and its natural vegetation are the stimuli to formation of farm economies of stock- raising specialization. Land resources in each particular locality determine the focus of arable farming and principal methods of crop cultivation. The major specificity of land use by farming economies is the lands’ highest possible involvement into agricultural production . On the whole, 60% of 2830.3 thousand ha of arable lands available in the Carpathian Region are tilled, whereas the level of tillage in farming economies is 92%. The reason is that the farmers are maximally economically interested to assure for land lease and credit payments. The distribution of land stock in administrative oblasts of the Carpathian Region is presented in Table 3.

Weiss’s analysis of the locust invasion period in the Northern Territory brings to light aspects of governance between the chiefs and the colonial government. In this example, we see aco-construction of governance by the chiefs and colonist to solve problems of famine and hunger in these provinces, as they come together to deliberate and implement strategies agreed upon by all.Even though relief policies were reached, one of the early difficulties was convincing farmers to start cultivating root crops, a practice they had not indulged in before, especially around the Navrongo area. The farmer’s reason for not adopting this new policy in their words are “our fathers never grew them” according to information in the informal diary written on Navrongo community in 1930 cited in . Here we see the farmers resisting change and governance policies by the colonist using historical recollections of their farming experiences and practices. The unavailability of digging sticks and enough seedlings also posed a challenge to this large scale project. This project to introduce root crop to farmers in the Navrongo area was later aborted. argued that this project was a “colonial propaganda” used to showcase colonial interventions in reducing famine and hunger, where more effective and efficient interventions could be done but were not done.

This “colonial propaganda”led to increased yam cultivation in other areas like Wala, where changes in household food consumption were noticed. Yam consumption increased compared to that of other staples.The women also preferred yams preparation to maize,millet or guinea corn which was more labour intensive. Communal yam farms were developed in the Builsa Native administration and Lawra-Tuma district.The Dagombas who were already known to cultivate yams produced surpluses which were exported to Kumasi and Accra in the South. Here we see how governmental intervention by the colonial government has reshaped the agricultural practice of its subjects the farmers who diversified their crop production.Rice was also given special attention by the colonial government for a while when they thought it could be a future cash crop, hydroponic gutter that will boost the economy of the Northern territories. Rice was chosen because it was not affected by the locust and had potentials of being a cash earner for the local farmers with the intend of reducing poverty and hunger, but also it was meant to provide funds for the colonial government if they operated large farms and exported it back home.This project partially succeeded as farmers started planting rice, but it did not attain the potentials for export. The traditional fast maturing guinea corn seeds from the Southern province known as red guinea corn or Kajie were also introduced in the Northern province, but little is said about the success of this particular project.

Lynn, C. W. an agricultural Superintendent proposed alternatives and diverse crops like pigeon peas , cassava and sesamumto remedy the food shortages caused by locustinvasions.Despite efforts put in place to promote the cultivation of alternative crops,some colonial agricultural experts like Shepard, C. Y, argued that the Northern territories is the most problematic part of the Gold Coast. Plagued by irregular rainfall, poor soils, bush fires, locust invasion and rinder pest epidemics which are detrimental to any agricultural activity. Shepard pointed out that another factor which slowed down agricultural growth was the conservative and somewhat primitive social organisation of the people contributing to food shortages in this region. This positioning of natives in the minds of the colonial administrators greatly differed,as some District Commissioners believed the natives could solve their own socio-economic problems with and without aid from the colonialist. This shift in the mindset of colonialist about the native’s potentials contributed to the introduction of a more modern, technical and scientific approach to the economiccris is in the Northern Territories to improve the well being of the people.Sutton states that sporadic attempts were made at generating a cash economy in the North as “experimental agricultural and livestock schemes were initiated, dropped and revived several times in the course of the colonial period”.

The Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers were introduced in the 19th century to solve the problems created by the SAP; it was a poverty reduction framework committed and devoted to poverty reduction at all levels. This strategy was also imperative if Ghana wanted to benefit from the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Fund—concessional credits and grants of about US$3.7 billion over a 20-year period. The PRSP was based on five principles—it had to be owned by the country, should be result-oriented, holistic in nature, participatory and have long term effects; these principles were arrived at as a result of earlier criticisms of the SAP. Other agricultural strategies like the Accelerated Agricultural Growth Development Strategy—to reduce poverty and improve human welfare and the International Fund for Agricultural Development initiatives in the Northern Region had to be made consistent with the PRSPs. The PRSP was required to outline its anti-poverty strategy and explain how donor funding—HIPC would be used to reduce poverty.

Critics such as Domfeh and Bawole , Car rand Whitfield have termed the Ghana PRSP as old wine in a new bottle, where an aid regime has been promoted and encouraged instead of a trade regime which can boost private investment and growth in the agricultural sector. Over the last decade,Ghana has met the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme targets, but regional disparities still exist in poverty levels and agricultural productivity.To boost investments and productivity,rolling bench intra-African trade and regional agri-food value chains, the Economic Community of West African States has also put in place regional agricultural policies of which Ghana is a signatory, but these policies seem not be solving the agricultural problems in the country. This article will show what we have been doing wrong and are still doing wrong and propose what we need to do to move forward. The evolving agricultural system in the Northern region will be assessed with emphasis on changes due to the socio-economic and political interaction of different material and social cultures from pre to post colonial era.This work is framed around the notion of entangled history adopted from the works of Weiss , where the interactions of different “social spaces” are studied to understand production, distribution and consumption patterns which overlap over time. This essay will examine the history of the Dagomba people who make up the Northern Region and throw some light on how their political and socio-economic environment shaped their agricultural practices and system.

It also explains how the agricultural activities of the Dagomba people have been shaped by the different land and agricultural policies enacted and carried out in pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial times. Finally, why vegetable agriculture has become an integral economic activity of the Dagomba people especially with increasing urbanisation in the city of Tamale. Blench and Dendo estimated the surface area of the Northern Region as70,384 sq.km. It is the largest region in Ghana. It comprises about 41% of the total land area in Ghana with headquarters in the Tamale Metropolis. Its population density is noted to be the lowest in the country. Rain-fed agriculture is predominant in this region as opposed to irrigated farming which even though present in the country, takes place in less than 2% of the total cultivated area . The primary economic activity of the Dagomba’s is agriculture, which employs more than 70% of the active population.Most importantly about 90.5% of households in the Northern region practice crop farming compared to other forms of agriculture .Interviews with key informants revealed that the Dagbon people have always relied on their farming skills as a source of income to provide and sustain their families. When the colonial administrators settled in Tamale as their head quarters,few Dagomba’s were interested in administrative jobs like clerks and teachers.As in the Dagomba culture, a man was defined according to his capacity to provide food for his family from his field, and white collar jobs were considered“activities of the weak”. Tamale has become an urban agriculturel city, with weaknesses not so different from the general agricultural system, but there are opportunities which if harnessed would make the system more sustainable and inclusive.

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.